The (new) Official PC building thread!

Bah, you're still jealous of me really. I hold the storage space and monitor high ground! lol
Isn't this pathetic?

 

If anybody is still looking for good optical drives, I HIGHLY recommend Plextor. I do an extreme amount of downloading/disc burning, and after all the bad burns and drive failures, I spent the extra $ for the Plextors and have never gone back. One brand I highly un-recommend is HP, in particular the dvd740, 840.

Haha I don't know Sam, I might have you beat on storage space.

WD 1tb ext (Video)
WD 500gb (Games)
WD 400gb (All Other Files)
WD 250gb ext (Applications)
WD 200gb (Music)
WD 80gb (XP Boot)
WD 35gb x 2 Raptor Raid 0 (Vista Boot)
AcomData 120gb ext (Business Backup)

For a grand total of....2,620gb...lol Anybody remember Win 3.0 and 100mb hard drives?

Anyway, I'm really trying to find a new video card for a friend. anybody have a recommendation for a kind of all in one video card? I'm looking for something that has a coax cable input to watch/record TV, transfer videos from a camcorder or something similar, and a card that can play most of the games I throw at it at a decent resolution. I'm not talking about maxing out frame rates here, just something that will play games at decent quality/resolution.

I was looking at the 8800 GT, but it seems mostly for gaming. I have an ATI all in wonder in my other box, and it works pretty decent, but that was a card from a year or so ago, I'm sure there are better ones for the $ now.

And what is the deal with PCIe 2.0? I was reading a review for the X38 chipsets, and the reviewer was basically saying to forget about it unless I need bleeding edge technology. He was saying it was a X38/48 chipset feature, and that GFX cards today and in the near future won't even be able to max out PCIe 1.0's bandwith, so PCIe 2.0 is essentially useless for now and the foreseeable future. So even for upgrade-ability's sake, is PCIe 2.0 not worth it?

Thanks for the help.

 

Lol ooh, just about. You have 2.62TB and I currently have 2.60TB. That's pretty damn close!
As for Plextors, they're excellent quality, but carry the appropriate price tag!
As for the video card, ATI All in wonder is where it's at. I would never recommend an nvidia card for such use, not because I'm a fanboy, but because nvidia's normal geforce cards don't have proper TV and VIVO support. That's present on all ATI's cards, even the standard Radeons.
My disk drives
Main PC
Western Digital WD2500AAJS 250GB S-ATA
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 250GB S-ATA
Linux Fileserver
Western Digital WD2500JS 250GB S-ATA x2
Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB S-ATA x2
External drives
Western Digital WD1600JD 160GB IDE
Western Digital Raptor WD360 36.7GB S-ATA
Samsung Spinpoint HD400LJ 400GB S-ATA

 

Till I finish my current HTCP build...it will be 6.32TB...all in one case...with a matching one for the New up stairs...
(6)1Tb W/D variable speed SATA 3.0 drives...for Storage...
(1) 320GB Seagate 7200rpm 16MB SATA 3.0...for O/S...Programs...and Games...
Just waiting for the Big price drop that will happen after New Years...

 

6 terabyte drives. They must have cost an arm and a leg!
I'm glad to see you've got the WD variable speed drives. What are they like?

 

@Sam
I have not got the W/D drives yet...they are supposed to go below $200 a drive...shortly after New Years...I will have less then 2Gs in the downstairs HTCP with the (6) drives...I built the downstairs HTCP with spare parts...I will probably have about $2,500 in the up stairs HTCP...I have not completely decided on the components for that one...I was going to go Penryn for the (4) Video Card Support...I could have a direct feed to up to (8) TV's if I take that route...Fasfranks problems are kind of making me Leary of that route...My house will be a Full on Smart Home...I will be able to control it from anywhere in the World...every single thing in it will be controlled by computer...Press my Garage Door opener...it will turn on the inside lights...TV's...what ever I want it to do...

 

I'd avoid Crossfire at all costs. Really I would.

 

I will not be running in crossfire...I just want the (4) video cards for the (8) possible HD/Blueray video feeds from (1) source...

 

Thanks He-Man, Thanks Sam!..
With that case I left the top drive bay empty and stuffed a lot of the wiring there. I layered the rest, coming down the front of the mobo and drives. I like to get the front panel connector wiring, USB and audio wiring on the bottom layer, then optical and HDD power next and then the SATAs. and any odd ones last. The 24 pin connector wire bundle and floopy cable tend to hide and hold everything in place. This Siverstone case is tight but manageable. I won't buy another one of these though.
Mort you are going to enjoy that Stacker! Full towers are great to work with and CM does a good job on their lower priced cases so I imagine this one will be excellent to work in.

He-Man, thanks for the links and info. I'm going to bring everything down to default clocks and go from there. Gpuz shows crossfire enabled. It also shows both pci-e slots at 16X. I will probably pull the cards and put them in my Asus P5W-DH mobo ans see what that does.

 

Hehe, Yeah I wold like to have a monitor like yours. Also guess how much storage space I have? 250GB! Oh also a 80GB Zune.

 

My new build planned for next month at the moment will be as follows, let me know what you think?

Intel QUAD Core 2 Extreme QX9650 3.2GHz 12MB 1333MHz
Asus P5E3 Maximus Extreme Deluxe/WIFI-AP Motherboard Intel X38 DDR3
4 x 1024mb OCZ Platinum Edition Memory 1800MHz DDR3 PC3-14400
2 x SLI EVGA GeForce 8800 Ultra BP 768MB GDDR3 PCIE Dual DVI
2 x Western Digital Raptor X 150GB S150 10,000rpm
4 x 1TB Seagate Barracuda SATA II 300 32MB cache 7200rpm HDD
Hauppauge WinTV-HVR4000 HD digital DVB-S2 TV Tuner
2 x Pioneer BDR-202 Blu-Ray Writer SATA BD-R/RE DVD+/-RW
Logitech Z-5500 Digital 500W RMS Dolby® Digital & DTS®
ThermalTake Armour LCS case + Liquid cooling
Enermax Galaxy 1000W Modular PSU EPS/ATX 12v Triple Quad Silent

 

If i am not mistaken, that build will be close to £3500..........

 

Who says everyone on Afterdawn is middle class? We have some rich people on here.

I would advise you to wait for the new 9800 cards that Nvidia will release soon. Since money doesn't seem like a problem to you, just get two of those instead if you want the best performance(From the amount of money you are spending I would assume you do want the BEST performance).

 

Just short of £3000 but if anybody has any alternative ideas I dont mind going upto £4000 for this build as it will be the basis of my media center plus hopefully some of the items may be in the January sales...

 

Who says i implied that?

The build itself is probably the best i have seen. Please take pics when complete, aswell as 3DMark etc

 

abuzar1

When realistically will the new cards be released as I have been told Febuary and if thats the case I will get the 8800 first then move these to one of my other pcs and then get the new ones in about may.

 

Then just get one. I'm sure you can hold off till then.

 

lol damn close sam...I cant even add anymore internal hard drives to My comp so ill be stuck aat 2.62tb for awhile

Hey jaz, nice parts list man...is that WinTV-HVR4000 made for the UK only? i was just looking at adding TV to a friend's build, I was probably gonna go with an ATI All-In-Wonder, I totally forgot about Happauge.

And just curious, what are you planning on using your raptors for? if youre trying to maximize the performance of the raptors I would def use it for your operating system. All the little reads/writes the OS is constantly doing will be sped up, and you'll notice the system booting quicker.

i have 2x35gb raptors in a raid 0 for my main operating system (Vista), a bunch of programs installed, and I don't come close to filling it. You might want to go down a notch to the 2x75gb, I'd hate to see 200gb @ 10,000rpm go to waste haha.

 

Let's forget about costs and suggest what's worth having:
QX9650: Why not?
P5E3 Maximus Extreme: Over the top, but a guaranteed success with that CPU
4GB DDR3 PC14400: A complete waste. You may as well just shove some high speede DDR2 in there for pretty mucht the same performance and a quarter of the cost.
SLI'd 8800 Ultras: No longer the kings of image quality, but impressive frame rates
2 Raptor 150s: perhaps, but do NOT put these in a RAID stripe, put them in a mirror. The reliability of the 150GB Raptors just isn't that high, you'll want redundancy.
4 Seagate 1TB drives: You could save quite a bit on electricity by using WD Variable speed drives instead
Can't comment on the DVD drives / TV card, look good though
Z-5500Speakers: Wow, something on this list I actually own! Fabulous speakers, just keep them away from electromagnetic interference!
Thermaltake Armor: A high spec case, good for a high end PC.
Enermax Galaxy: Over the top, even for your needs. The Galaxies aren't even the best top end PSUs around, go with a PC power and cooling Silencer Quad 750W. They're not silent, but they're well built units, and won't fail at half the amount of power they're rated for. (The enermax units sometimes do_
You say this'll be going in a media center PC. You do realise it'll be very loud right?
It's difficult to silence high end gear like this, but if you want to start, get a Thermalright Ultra 120 heatsink for your CPU, and get two HR-03 Plus coolers for the 8800s, that'll halve the noise level.

 

you realise you cannot SLI your Ultras on that board?