New rig

[nitroshift]

Hey guys!

I'm after parts for my new pc, so far I chose these:

CPU: AMD Phenom II x2 550 87.99 USD

Mobo: Asus M4A89TD PRO 179.99USD

PCI-E: Sapphire ATI Radeon HD5770 1GB 144.99 USD

RAM: Mushkin Silverline 2x2GB DDR3 76.99 USD

PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 650W 169.99 USD

As for the HDD, I have a pair of 73.4 GB @15k rpm SAS drives that I'm planning to use in a RAID 0 array using this card: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16816117158 (129.99 USD) only for the OS (data will be kept on a separate drive that I already have).

Please chime in and let me know what you think (CoffeFiend's and PuntoMX's thoughts will prevail )

nitroshift

PS. I have kept the water-cooling system and I will be using it in the new rig.Prices are taken off newegg.com, although I will be buying the parts from local shops.

[Sp0iLedBrAt]

Just to tell you there's some problem with the links. They open just as they are shown newegg.co.....

[bonestonne]

Antec TruePower 550 would be a better PSU for that build. Better efficiency, quieter fan, and it'll be easier to work with. 650 is overkill. Also, remember that the TruePower series do not peak at their rated output, that is there highest rated continuous. The 550W Antec True Power peaks closer to 600-620W if you really think you'll be approaching those power needs.

Also, for the price, why not go for a quad core? I'm sure it's well more power than you'll realistically need, but the availability would mean you don't have to buy another CPU in the future.

I have no complaints about any other components, although for the 5770, I would suggest the MSI Hawk version, it's quieter and cools better than most other stock cards.

[nitroshift]

Antec TruePower 550 would be a better PSU for that build. Better efficiency, quieter fan, and it'll be easier to work with. 650 is overkill. Also, remember that the TruePower series do not peak at their rated output, that is there highest rated continuous. The 550W Antec True Power peaks closer to 600-620W if you really think you'll be approaching those power needs.

Also, for the price, why not go for a quad core? I'm sure it's well more power than you'll realistically need, but the availability would mean you don't have to buy another CPU in the future.

I have no complaints about any other components, although for the 5770, I would suggest the MSI Hawk version, it's quieter and cools better than most other stock cards.

Note taken on the PSU, thanks. As for the CPU, that Phenom II can be unlocked to 4 cores And the 5770 will be watercooled too.

@SpoiledBrat

Links work just fine here, both on IE9 Beta and Firefox 3.6.10.

[Guest]

@SpoiledBrat

Links work just fine here, both on IE9 Beta and Firefox 3.6.10.

I'm sure Sp0iLedBrAt meant the abbreviated links like "http://www.newegg.co..." which are now conspicuously absent from your "unedited" post, nitroshift. They didn't work for me either.

You can't fool a fellow mod.

Edited September 29, 2010 by 5eraph

[nitroshift]

I'm sure Sp0iLedBrAt meant the abbreviated links like "http://www.newegg.co..." which are now conspicuously absent from your "unedited" post, nitroshift.

LinkS? What linkS? There's only one...

PS. I've edited the post after noticing that IE9 was loading the pages from cache and didn't link to the original pages in the first place... Oh well, something new to report to the IE team over at Microsoft

[Guest]

LOL.

It does look like a decent system though as is.

Edited September 29, 2010 by 5eraph

[puntoMX]

Note taken on the PSU, thanks. As for the CPU, that Phenom II can be unlocked to 4 cores And the 5770 will be watercooled too.

yes, "can" be unlocked but that's not 100% for sure. Get an Athlon X4 635 or 640 and see if you can unlock L3 cache, better chance with that. To bad if you can't unlock L3 cache but at least you will have the 4 cores (Got my 620 with unlocked L3 at 3.4+GHz).

PSU you picked is a bit expensive indeed. And you know the deal... GIGABYTE GA-890FXA-UD5, ultra Mega Super PRO*. Did I miss something special with the ASUS?

* 3 Year factory warranty included.

[nitroshift]

@PuntoMX

The reason I chose the Asus mobo is the PCI-E port that fits the RAID-controller card. Gigabyte doesn't have it

[allen2]

I will just speak about the raid controller: the one you choose isn't worth the money (performance wise) as it doesn't come with read/write cache.

I would go for another (now Lsi) 3ware 9650 2lp : http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?p=3WA965SE2S&c=pw&hash=e0b9a%2Bg65UPO7hj%2FAbnHcsGff8tf6kJ7lCKvJc%2BLoDuLxq38H22tLCuVEIl5n7Nn%2Bmh8TUIJuWsXYfUuiwwawc%2BWrCI31Ejo3WJ0X0Z1RavEh6DSYPGJdosKo6Gq as it comes with 128MB cache.

[nitroshift]

Thanks allen2, will have to look around and see if that particular controller is available here.

[allen2]

Any sas raid controller with at least 64MB Cache would perform better than the intel one as its chipset (LSI 1064E) is quite basic and a little old (first released in 2006). As a side note go with a controller with some thermal cooling as those animals may produce a lot of heat when performing heavy duty like defrag.

[puntoMX]

The reason I chose the Asus mobo is the PCI-E port that fits the RAID-controller card. Gigabyte doesn't have it

So, you think a PCI-E x4 card doesn't fit in a x16 sloth? Think again.

[bonestonne]

Ha, but why buy an extra RAID controller? They're pretty expensive for one that's actually good.

Only other thing I can think of is that some slots are GPU only (but that's mostly a problem with ITX and mATX boards.

(Devil's Advocate).

[alrichdesa]

I am running an XFX 5770, it performance is decent for its price. Overclocks like a darl too...950Mhz and 1400 Mhz Core and Memory respectively using AMD Overdrive

Make sure you get a genuine copy of Windows 7 to make use of all its capabilities.