Help me build a new home PC...

[Mr. Ski]

Disclaimer: Hope it's OK to start another one of these -- couldn't find a recent one on the first 10 pages tonight...

So I'm looking to build myself a new PC for home. I've only bought Dell's going back over 12 years. Thought about doing that again, but I want to go the 'build it myself' route this time -- I'm comfortable with the process, and want to give it a go.

My budget is $1000-$1200 or so. This is just for the PC itself. Already have nice 24" monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, etc. Also can probably re-use the internal 16x DVD burner I have as it's less than a year old and has been rock solid. Will be running XP Pro SP2 for now.

Don't play any graphics-crazy games; heaviest use is Photoshop CS3 and business software (MS.SQL 2005 based Accounting Systems). Also would like some sort of RAID system for HD mirroring (RAID 1? or 10?).

So, assuming I'm shopping at Memory Express or similar, where shoud I begin? Intel Dual or Quad core? Lots of RAM?

What would people recommend?

Sincerely appreciate all help.

[Vulcan]

A year ago I was into building a computer and researched it a lot. Now not so much.

For the best bang for the buck I've heard that an Intel 8400 dual core [$190] or the 6600 quad core [$205] are fine. If you plan on overclocking or just want to run cool get an aftermarket cooler.

Good video cards have dropped in price big time so a 8800GT for about $150 sounds good to me. I've also heard that the new ATI 4870 for around $300 is good value, but they're hard to find.

I'd probably get a Vista 32 bit OS but 32 bits only use about 3 GB of memory. Memory is cheap though so I'd buy two sticks of 2GB each for 4GB, at less than $100. I'd get DDR2 800.
Oh yeah, I'd stick with DDR2 rather than DDR3, so think about that when buying your MB.

I'm not up on the latest MBs but an Asus P5K Premium WiFi with Raid for $145 would be OK.

For a decent case with a decent Power Supply, I went with an Antec Sonato III with a 500 watt PS. $110

I'm not up on the hard drives but maybe a couple of Western Digital SE16 500 GB for about $73 each are good value.
My prices come from NCIX but with Memory Express you won't have to pay for shipping and RMAs, if needed, would be easier.
Have fun.

[toonmaster]

I've never been sold on the Western Digital brand name, I'd stick with Seagate as your HD of choice.

[Mr. Ski]

So doing a bit more reading today, and basing a few choices on Vulcan and Toonmast (thanks!) here is a first shot with prices based on Memory Express:

ANTEC - Sonata III Quiet Super Mini Tower w/ EarthWatts 500W, eSATA - $129
Intel - Core™2 Duo Processor E8400 3.00GHz w/ 6MB Cache - $209
Asus - P5E w/ DualDDR2 1066, 7.1 Audio, Gigabit Lan, 1394, Dual PCI-E x16 CrossFire - $239
Corsair - 4GB XMS2-6400 DMX TWIN2X Dual Channel DDR2 Kit (2 x 2GB) - $139
SEAGATE - 500GB Barracuda 7200.11 SATA II w/ NCQ, 32MB Cache - $319 for 4 (configured as RAID 10 on MB)
SAPPHIRE - Radeon HD 4850 512MB PCI-E w/ Dual DVI, HDTV-Out - $199

Total is $1239


Any opinions on this setup?

[Vulcan]

Looks good to me but I'm surprised some others haven't offered their input. One thing about NCIX is they have good forums, links to reviews and customer input for what hardware you're interested in.

That MB looks like it would be good for XFire with both PCIe slots at full 16x mode. If you do plan on XFire, the 500 watt PS might not be enough. I've heard good things abut the 4850 video card though and you won't need two unless for heavy gaming. Maybe a cheaper MB would work for you.

[Vulcan]

I'm surprised that Memory Express doesn't carry the Mid sized Sonata III. A larger case is better for cooling but I'd add a front fan in either 'case'.

[Mr. Ski]

Originally Posted by Vulcan

Maybe a cheaper MB would work for you.

I thought about that too. I looked at cheaper MB's but this one looked to be the lowest cost one that did RAID 10 with good reviews. That said, I'm still open to options.

Thanks again for your help here.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by Mr. Ski

I thought about that too. I looked at cheaper MB's but this one looked to be the lowest cost one that did RAID 10 with good reviews. That said, I'm still open to options.

Thanks again for your help here.

I've never used Raid, so I can't offer any advice here.

[psicodude]

Any specific reason you are going for RAID 10? I mean, it's a bit of overkill for an average user, IMO. I would just get 2 of them and go RAID 1. You could also look at getting 2 10K rpm drives for a fairly large boost in performance.

You could also go with a cheaper video card if you aren't going to play many games, and save yourself $100.

I would take they money you save from that, and put it into a quad core...just so you don't have to worry about it for a few years.

[SebC]

Something to consider is that if Photoshop CS3 is your heaviest user, you may want to go with the Q6600. CS3 is one of the programs that benefits most from having a quad core processor.

Also, if you're going to have four hard drives and an optical drive, you'll need to pick a different powersupply. The one you've selected only has 4 SATA connectors, and assuming your DVD drive is SATA, you'd need five. Either that, or you'll have to abandon RAID 10.

[CubicleGeek]

Place emphasis on RAM, CPU, and disc if Photoshop CS3 is your main use. All CS3 applications multi-thread very well, so I'd look at more cores rather than higher clock speed.

Here's something to consider other than RAID 1+0. I'd personally look at getting RAID 0 for the computer and picking up a D-Link DNS-323 running RAID 1 with daily scheduled backups. Here's the scoop:

1) RAID 0 has better read/write performance than 1+0 as it almost scales linearly to the number of drives. This is helpful if you ever hit a situation where for whatever reason Photoshop needs to create a paging file.
2) Although it won't be quite as tolerant to faults, the daily backups will put you at worst case a day's worth of lost work if you experience a drive failure before your scheduled backup. If you put in the little extra effort to manually resync after doing any significant amount of work, it's even less of a hit.

I'm running 4 Raptors in RAID 0 for my OS drive and 2 other drives in RAID 0 for my temp/scratch disk. My lifeline is the RAID 1 DNS-323 sitting on my network which backs up every night at midnight and I always resync manually. So far it has worked very well for me, since I get the 4 drive RAID 0 performance with the redundancy of RAID 1 and a worse case 1 day work loss. If I were to do something similar in RAID 1+0, it would be 12 drives. If you're running gigabit ethernet, it takes less than a minute to sync a GB of changed data (files that haven't changed won't need to be synced).

[Mr. Ski]

Thanks for the note on the Power Supply. I was looking at an Antec 900 last night, in which case I can pick any PS.

The RAID 0 is a consideration, but the thought of either drive failing and taking everything down makes me very nervous. The back-ups would partially mitigate that I agree. What back-up software do you use?

[CubicleGeek]

I've had issues with the Memeo back-up software that is included with the drive and Vista 64 so I'm using Windows Backup. You can schedule regular backups and/or force a backup whenever you want. I like it because it's versioned and keeps a history (so say your computer crashed mid-back up, you always have the previous one to draw from). It's built on the same premise as Windows Restore is.

Memeo may be better, but I haven't used it...