The Ultimate Dream Computer

dan1677

That's what turned me into a builder back in 1996, just knowing the kind of thieves that take advantage of new users. My entire system was built for $1900 US and I have a 22" Viewsonic P225f monitor which still sells for around $600.

Welcome to the builders club where real quality is determined by oneself.

 

Yeah it's all good from here on out. I've built a pc for a friend too as he told me he wanted to buy. I begged him not to buy a pre-built and once I showed the the difference in cost he was staggered. So now he has a nice little AMD 3700+, A8N-SLi deluxe and a 7800GTX with 1024mb corsair ram. All for £620!

 

Dan in UK,

Sorry for being ignorant about the exchange rate. So the symbol is representing the Euro (sp?). Your new system seems pretty sweet. What games do you run on it? I have a 6600 GT and I think THAT is pretty dang awesome looking for CS: Source, BF2 and EE2! Therefore, your system must look amazing!

 

Hey Zeph, don't worry about it dude. Exchange rates change so much it's difficult to get it right. Oh but it wasn't the Euro sign it was the GBP (Great British Pound) sign. I'm mostly running Doom 3 and Half Life 2 at present.i can run Doom 3 with 8xAA, 16xAF and VSYNC enabled and get a steady 60fps which is very sweet. Same with HL2. Flight Sim 2004 is pretty amazing to look at too. Everything turned up to max it looks very real.

 

For me i want a PC that can play alot of game this is my dream PC

Mobo:
GA-8I955X Royal

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/MotherBoard/Products/Products_GA-8I955X Royal.htm

CPU's:
Intel® Pentium® 3.2GHz processor Extreme Edition (Dual-Core)

http://www.intel.com/products/processor/pentiumXE/index.htm

Memory:
4GB DDR2 PC888 (Dual Channel DDR2 888 Memory Architecture)


Hardrive's:
2 X MAXTOR 200GB SATA (GigaRAID SATA RAID Controller)

Video Adapter:
2 X Geforce 7800GTX DDR3 512MB (SLI MULTI-GPU TECHNOLOGY)
PCI Express Interface

http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce_7800.html

Monitor's:

Philips 20" UXGA LCD monitor
200P6IB/00

DVD Drives:
Benq CD482B 48X24X48
Benq DW1620 16X+R 16X-R DVD+RW/R 8.5 Double Layer

PSU:
Ultra 500W ATX PSU - Titanium w/ UV Blue

http://www.videopro.com.sg/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1581

Case:
For me is anything

CPU Cooler:

Gigabyte GH-WIU01 3D Galaxy liguid cooler

http://www.videopro.com.sg/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=71_99&products_id=1166

Sound:

Designed for Dolby Master Studio 7.1 HD surround

Network:

Dual Gigabit LAN connectivity

 

my pc would hav 2 look good, as well as outperform any competition.

CPU's: intel p4 extreme edition 3.73ghz
Mobo:ASUS 945p ddr2 1066fsb
Graphics Card: ATi Fire gl v7100 256mb gddr3 sd ram - 2dvi
Monitors: 2x ViewSonic vpw5500 55" widescreen hdtv screens, dvi input
Sound Card: sound blaster X-Fi Elite Pro
power Supply: ANTEC TP2-550EPS12V TRUE POWER 2.0 550W PS
Case: Thermaltake Armour black full towerw side window
HDD: 2x Hitachi Deskstar 7k500 sata 500GB 7200 rpm
RAM: OCZ DDR Platinum 4 gb (4x1024Mb) pc 4800, 600mhz

Accessories: a few neon lights throughout the case, some uv reactive hdd connectors and some nice, 12mm light up fans. Also the prometeia mach 2 cooler unit bundle, it cools the CPU to sub-Zero temperatures

 

Wow, you guys defo got me thinking about all these dream machines.

I definatly dream up a machine, but the reality of it is, i simply dont have the money to make it happen.

At the moment my setup is a simple, but effective eMachine retail PC.
Intel 2.4Ghz, 512mb ram, 128 ATI radeon 9200se, 80GB Maxtor HDD.
And I dont have a clue about motherboards!

That setup was bought about a two years ago, although it doesnt seem like it. and was bought for a astonishing expensive £750!

Its a good job that its a family PC and my parents paid for it!

But now im looking for the best PC £500 can get me. And at the mo its looking like this:
Intel 3.4Ghz, 2GB Ram, 256MB ATI GFX (not sure which one)1x 30GB HDD for system files and another 100GB for everything else.

Tell me if im in over my head, or if i can get more for my money.
So at the moment this is my dream machine, taking into account the money i can spend!

 

Are you sure you need 2GB of RAM? That's a lot for a £500 system.

In a sense, my 'dream' system is the system that I will in summer hopefully be buying, with a couple of concessions to avoid paying unnecessarily great amounts of money.
It's detailed in my signiature at the bottom

 

Hmm,..ok, I think this is what I would build....if I knew how

Processor: AMD Athlon™ 64 FX-60

Graphics Processor: ATI Radeon® X1900

Memory: 4GB Low Latency Dual Channel DDR SDRAM at 333MHz - 4 x 1024MB

System Drive: Extreme Performance (RAID 0) - 148GB RAID0 (2 x 74GB Serial ATA 10,000 RPM w/8MB Cache)

Storage Drive: Additional Storage Drive - 1TB (500GB x 2) Serial ATA-II 3Gb 7,200 RPM w/32MB Cache

Primary CD ROM/DVD ROM: 16x Dual Layer DVD±R/W Drive w/LightScribe Technology

Secondary CD ROM/DVD ROM: 16x Dual Layer DVD±R/W Drive w/LightScribe Technology

Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster® X-Fi® Elite Pro High Definition 7.1 Audio with XRAM Technology

Other than that,..I have no idea,..half of this stuff is even WAY over my head.

 

I totally dig everything except the GPU. I would rather have a GeForce 7800 GTX. Or whatever they put out next. Also, that would all be totally rad with a 24 inch LCD monitor that is top-of-the-line!

The case for all that would be of import as well as the mobo. And the CPU that AMD comes up with next that is a better dual-core proc would be better too. Love the raptors (I have two 37 GB ones) and the additional storage. The rest is prime as well.

My current system is weak but it is adequate: Amd Barton 2600+, Windows XP Pro, GeForce 6600 GT, Maxtor 250 GB 16 MB cache, with 2 37 GB raptors, 420 watt PSU, Sony DVD-ROM, NEC DL DVD-BURNER, Sony Floppy drive, a 19 inch Acer LCD monitor with 8 ms, and a Blue Aspire x-qpak micro-Atx case. The case has a handle so my set-up is pretty easy to tote to LAN parties.

 

dukhnt

Nice layout but you could save some money.

The Opteron 175 will match and perhaps beat the speed of the FX60 (look at my specs) since the have essentially the same core. Savings $700.

Radeo is find for speed (it beats the 7800).

Memory is fine depending on make, I would recommend OCz or corsair

One 150 gig raptor is a better deal than two 74 gig raptors. It's faster than the two in a RAID0 and it cost less.

The rest is just fine.

 

my dream computer

intel pentium 4 @3.6ghz
3GB DDR
3X400GB hard drives.about 1.2TB
32Xdvd burner
32Xdvd rom
50 inch high definition screen
wireless keyboard ,
wireless optic mouse
satellight or cable internet connection
sound hooked up to 3amps 5subwoofers and 8surround sound speakers

just all that stuff alone could cost $30000 or more.for a 50inch high def tv its about $20000.

 

Hmmm, why get a $30,000 computer with all that with a slowpoke intel processor? Confused.
I didn't think 32x DVD reading (and certainly not writing) existed... Seems just a pipedream, and why not 4GB of RAM? Why go short with 3? You cant even have it dual channel with 3. That system would be creamed by An Opteron 175 combo. Majorly.

 

Here's my computer tell me what you think

Linksys WMP54G Wireless 802.11G PCI NIC

Logitech Z2300 Spk/2.1 200W RMS 400W 8in Subwoofer

Ultra 1024MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz

Liteon 52X Black Internal CDRW Drive

Seagate 250GB EIDE HD 7200/8MB/ATA-100

Intel P4 640 3.20gGHz HT 2M 800FSB Socket 775

Xion 2 Black Gaming Case w/ 450W PSU

Logitech Cordless Desktop EX110

Asus P5LD2 Deluxe Socket 775 Motherboard

LiteOn 16xDVD Burner w/blk/white Bezels

DCL 9A+ 19in 1280x1024 Blk 8ms LCD MOnitor

 

I have posted here once before on page 6 or so. At the time my dream computer was a pair of Xeons loaded into a Supermicro mainboard. I built 3 dual Xeon computers. Two of these are for video capture and one is for CAD. The video cards reflect these special uses.

The two computers that capture video are slightly different. They have the same CPU and mainboard but use a different RAID card and raid backplane. One raid is a Intel SRCU42X with dual backplane and the other is Adaptec 2200s on a single backplane. They are both dual channel SCSI 320 cards, one of the chassis is single channel.

The Intel card using a dual channel backplane is better. This computer captures video and doesn't drop frames. It will capture 3 hours and not lose a second nor will it experience out of snyc issues.

The Adaptec2200 card on a single channel backplane loses frames after 20 minutes. Sometimes less. This results in out of sync issues between video and sound.

That's the only difference. Otherwise they both are fast computers and compress .mpgs at very good speeds. Obviously a task such as this is rarely multithreaded so you single proc guys will probably see better speeds compressing video. However, so many things are multithreaded that two Xeons outperforms 1 Pentium.

The single channel raid is almost pointless. To realize the most improvement in computer performance I have 1 suggestion.

The IntelSRCU42X with 512Mb unbuffered DDR upgrade, 2 channels of RAID at 320X, HDDs of 148-300 capacity. Just having intense read/write times is improvement enough. CPU performance is also crucial, but read/write is the MOST important because if you can't acheive peformance here, you're dropping frames and losing sync. That's just wasted time. BTW, I don't play games on them.

At Afterdawn we discuss video so the write performance of a computer should be one of the biggest. Alot of posters are concerned with gaming performance. Might as well build a completely separate system for this IMO. When writing 4Gb files is the order of the day why would you focus on DirectX performance and screen refresh?? It takes more time to write a 4Gb file on SATA than SCSI. It takes more time to write on a SATA raid than a SCSI raid. It doesn't matter what video card is installed. A large 64Bit slot is required on the board for fast controllers. That limits your choices of MBs right there because most of them don't have the 133 or 66Mhz slots.

I spend most time doing capture/edit/recompress. Most of the time I'm reading or writing 4Gb files. The time is saved when writing. CPU performance is irrelevant because bottlenecking is occurring at the HDDs. I don't see how a fast video card is going to save me either.

 

I think dream computers can take many forms. But at their core is an incredibly efficient subset of features;

CPU-RAM speeds
DRIVE speeds
VIDEO capacity
DVD write capacity

Many huge vendors have made millions with ability to focus on those 4 fingers, their computers are especially efficient on those tasks, almost specialized. With that concept I consider the chassis to be probably the most important. For me, rackmountable is a step in the right direction so I can consolidate 30 processors in 1 small space. Having tried a couple rackmount chassis, I can say the SC933s2 is superior and flexible. It's advantage is size and HDD backplane. If you want to plug in cards, good ones, you need size and server blades will never offer that. Blades rarely offer a backplane either. The SC933s2 is two units in one, it is the RAID center coupled with a server chassis, large enough for PRO sized cards, a 7x7 array, and comes with 760W triple redundant power supply. With a good nerve center can become one of many GREAT computers. It's secret; the backplane.

Looks like I made my original post in Sept of 2004. That was a while back!! Still, after months of use, those chassis have proven themselves in my book. The computers have hardly lost value, HDDs went down some... and is still a joy to use. Some of my software is out dated... but otherwise a perfectly good work practice has evolved from them and I'm happy. Now Supermicro offers a 2 channel backplane for SC833 units. This will kick the doors open on those...

 

Don't forget though, Dream computers can take the stance of being gaming machines as well as just video-capture machines. Computers like that usually have a business tie in with them, since big video capture jobs on a regular basis is usually less of a hobby, more of an occupation, in my experience.

 

You got me there.

I suppose really I'm dreaming of 2 blade servers stipped down to procs and memory (amd or intel) and a couple of good capture horses so I can capture, edit, render and all at the same time with zero delays in the production process. I want to be able to fire up 30 procs with the touch of a button and see renders get done in hours instead of days on the full screen stuff and seconds instead of minutes on the small logo stuff. I want to beat the software for all it's worth, I paid major bucks for it but the horses are barely capable of pulling it. This is life with 6 Xeons. It takes MAJOR power.

 

I'm aware of how much hardware video capturing takes. One wonders how it was done before, it must have taken weeks. I can't help but wonder what a set of Overclocked Opterons would achieve in this department.

 

Actually i changed my mind, my dream computer would be a nice plain beige system with dual Pentium 1s, or even better 2 486DX's. That would be amazing, with about 3 or 4 megs of ram, it would be so fast, not to mention the gigantic 22mb 2000 RPM Hard drive. The guy at the computer store tells me that will last forever, so ill be safe and get 2 of those huge hard drives.unfortunately that whole setup, along with a monochrome 12" monitor and a basic keyboard, will cost me a whole.....hmmm.....maybe 2 dollars lol. Thats my dream system right there, Noone will have one like it...lmao