Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Windows 7 PC Build

I think I'm ready to start getting advice on building my new computer. I don't have all of the money yet, but I will over the next few paychecks.

The things I'm pretty set on are that I'll get an Intel Core i7 Extreme processor and 160GB SSD. My friend who works for Intel says that there's a set he can get that includes those two items along with an Intel motherboard for around $1000. I don't know if it's the new P55 motherboard or not. My friend hasn't gotten back to me with the pricing list. Anyway, I know I want the CPU and SSD, but I'm not really sure on what motherboard(s) I should be looking at. Gigabit ethernet and eSATA are important to me. I would like two eSATA ports, if possible, but if that has to be an add-on card, I can live with that. Onboard audio isn't important. I'll use a USB DAC until I can utilize the HDMI audio output of the video card at some point (whenever I get around to purchasing an A/V receiver for my computer).

I imagine I'll only ever run one video card. I figured I'd make it one of the new Radeon cards, since I've been happy with the performance of the one that's a couple generations old.

I was also thinking I'd stick with an Antec case, since I really like the P182SE that I have now. I was thinking P193, but customer comments about not being able to fit bigger aftermarket coolers has me undecided. I definitely want a quiet CPU cooler, so it would be nice to know what my options are. I haven't had good luck with stock fans. Right now, I like the Zalman I'm using. I'm just not sure what will fit right in the P193, or what would be a better case to use. I like the front eSATA port on the P193, though of course I'd need a motherboard that can take advantage of that.

I also thought I'd stick with Corsair for a power supply. I imagine the 850-watt HX model would be a pretty safe bet.

Whatever advice you can give me would be appreciated, especially on motherboard, memory, and CPU coolers. Thanks!

If it's an Extreme, it's an i7-965, which requires X58. I have a Gigabyte X58-UD4P board, and I'm pretty happy with it. It's got gig-E (single port) and 2 eSATA ports that are on a backplate. For a cooler, I would look at a Thermalright Ultra 120 variant, with a Scythe 120mm fan. Doesn't get much quieter than that--and it's damn good cooling, to. Corsair is an excellent choice of PSUs.

Oh btw, that i7-965 is $1000 retail, and the SSD is $500. Lucky stiff...

I've seen that Thermalright mentioned quite a bit. I'll look into that and the Scythe. Your Gigabyte board sounds like a winner.

For memory, you'll be wanting at least 6 GB of DDR3-1600. That's pretty easy to find tehse days, but I'd stick with Corsair, OCZ, or Crucial. I believe I've got OCZ DDR3-1600 8-8-8 XDR in mine. XDR makes it a little easier to set memory timings, but really, memory latency doesn't make that much of a real world difference.

Good to know. I'll probably end up with more than 6 gigs simply because I have 8 in my current machine, so I'll feel the need to outdo myself.

Oh, I was also curious as to what optical drives seem to be the best ones to get these days. CD burning and CD ripping are always important. As far as DVD and Blu-ray go, I'd like to be able to play back both, but I still don't feel the need to burn either format. I'm sure I'll end up with DVD burning just because it'll be included, but yeah, as far as Blu-ray, I'm only interested in playback. And of course, the quieter the drive, the better.

HD DVD playback would be a nice bonus, since I know there are still combo drives out there that will play them, but it's a feature I'd certainly sacrifice for performance/noise reasons.

No one is building HD DVD combo drives any more. They only existed one generation after the format died.

Most optical drives are very quite when run at their 1x speed. It's up to the player software to slow them down for movie playback (most software does).

Plextor used to be the company for optical drives. They've since stopped making their own, and have turned to other OEM and just rebadge. Pioneer is one of those OEMs and now the top dog. I know you said you don't care about burning DVDs/BDs. But you want this drive, you know you do.

It's not unreasonably priced. I may get a non-Blu-ray drive at first, then add it a little later. We'll see.

Up until recently had a nVidia EVGA E-GEFORCE 7600 GT PCI-E 256MB VGA DVI-I HDTV Out.

I love the nVidia for performance. After the first few months the fan was making loud noises (failing) so i bought an aftermarket fan (Zalman) and things were good. After the 3 year warranty ended this past June, a month later the capacitors popped. Dead card for 3D (2D will worked ok). I contacted eVGA and complained saying "hey, one month after the warrenty ends i have issues? Come on."
They allowed me to return the vidcard with all parts intact for a replacement equivalent.
Well dammit if i had kept the failed fan from 3 years prior i would've been fine, but i guess i threw it out not having considered a possible returnable product scenario into the future (I could have returned it for a failed fan but really, i would've got another unit with the same crappy fan design so why bother?).

Before that i had Radeon cards, usually All in Wonders (tv tuning).
Fans never failed but the buggy drivers, glitchy performance and crap customer service had me screaming constantly. I know other sites and people use them, love them but i just have had no luck. I vowed never to buy another one again. I put nVidia into two other machines, worked solid.

So after this eVGA died, what did i do?
I was convinced the best price performers were the new Radeon 4000 series compared to what nVidia was selling at the time, so i couldn't bring myself to buy a nVidia. I should have just thrown out the extra $150, but i over analyzed the situation.

Now, i have a Radeon 4850 and the fan is dying, my computer halts on shutdown and occasionally won't come out of standby. Upon reboot i get m/b error beeps indicating a vidcard issue.
Only by powering off the psu for 30 seconds and trying again (sometimes with multiple attempts) does it finally boot normally.
Everything works fine once booted though.
No BSOD, no random reboots, no 3D glitches, etc. However, the fan is failing (the ONE thing that never happened with ATI before but did happen with nVidia cards now seems to be a shared flaw; crappy fans).

So WTF??

I'm going back to nVidia; change out the stock fan and feel better about stability or rather, consistent performance.


I love the Corsair HX psu i bought.
Detachable cables.
Quiet fan.
Beefy unit.
Pretty good efficiency (see reviews on Tom's Hardware).

Chess. Is it driver quirks on the ATI card then? I am looking at one of the new lower end 5 series cards to bitstream bluray in my HTPC. I will probably wait a few months for the [major] bugs to get ironed out though.

I love my Corsair ps. It is unbelievably quiet and the cabling is very nicely wrapped. The only thing that would make my psu nicer is detachable cables so I could remove the uneeded cables. I think they do that in the bigger supplies (mine is only 450W).

Driver quirks don't cause motherboard beeps. Sounds like a poorly constructed card. Also, if the fan is dying, that could cause many of those errors.

All in all, I'd say that problems with video cards have more to do with the card manufacturers than the GPU makers, barring major driver problems--which I've sen with both the green team and the red team.

Possibly though i have updated drivers twice since having the card and nothing has changed, or possibly a quirk with the BIOS and this particular m/b.
I've never had this issue in the past, though other, similarly baffling things, but only with ATI cards.
Their performance when running is on par with what you read in reviews, but their glitches all around are many.
Searches on the net typically find patches, workarounds, etc. but i ask why i have to do that in the first place.


The Corsair HX series all have detachable cables. The power cables are a bit of a stiff plastic sheathing though. I wish it was a bit nicer of material, higher quality, easier to bend.

The fan is sounding ugly, but spinning ok.
I will be replacing it soon (have to buy another after market gpu cooler again).
However, on shutdown or standby, driver issues could cause a lock in the vidcard hardware providing such a problem.
That lock could remain through a warm reboot and hence why clearing the problem can only be done through a cold reboot.

But i do agree it is more likely an issue with the hardware (card itself or incompatibility with the system...say m/b or ram).


True, but i've had ATI cards when the GPU maker WAS the card maker. Like i said, once they get performing the ATI cards perform as expected.
I have just noticed personally more weird glitches with ATI cards than with nVidia.
I think my count for cards goes as such, back to 1998:
2 Matrox
4 ATI (3 Radeons)
4 nvidia

My heat sink suggestion goes to the Prolimatech Megahalems. I just installed one for my overclocked Q6600 and it's a beast. It's currently the best cooler on the market-review's below. You could put in a Scythe Slip Stream 120 mm fan on it, or a Scythe Ultra Kaze 120MM High Static Pressure 38MM 3000RPM Fan as I have done (better performance but louder). It also fits in my Antec 900.

Review

Review

Tom's Hardware review on PSUs.

Is the Corsair still a rebadged Seasonic?

I like these guys for HTPC parts reviews.

I've seen the SilentPC site but their reviews i find are few and far in between.
They have some great tips on silencing issues though that i've used on my system.

Next two major changes towards silence include adding a water cooled system but using a quiet, slower pump not really for high end overclocking (e.g. the Zalman Reserator).

Second, moving to SSD for storage.

The two loudest components in my system are:
CPU fan (just using stock for now)
HD data seeking and platter spin

Otherwise my comp is almost dead quiet.

I've not been impressed with Zalman products in the past, I have to say. They're almost never as silent as everyone claims, since the silence comes at the expense of heat. And even when it's making noise, they still don't seem to cool all that well.

Cam, the Prolimatech Megahalems sounds pretty cool. It may be the way to go, but there's definitely no way it would fit in the Antec P193 case I was looking at. Does anyone know of a quiet case that is roomy enough for a cooler like this, as well as whatever giant video card I end up with?

Thats what I like about silentpcreview. They may not review often, but when they do, they provide lots of quantitative data.

Sounds like you are in for a fun project. There is nothing like the first few seconds of anticipation before you turn on the power for the first time. Will it work, or did that wire belong on pins 3&4 instead of 4&5?

Then the bliss as you don't smell smoke.

Charles, the width of the P193 is identical to that of my Antec 900 so it will fit. Also, this guy has the P193 and Prolimatech Megahalems.

Are you sure he didn't have to modify it? From all of the comments I was reading, the mobo tray is elevated, and the fan on the side intrudes into the case a bit, giving a maximum of around 140mm for a CPU cooler, where the Megalahems are at 158mm?

I will message him, I am a member of that site.

ATI is making some great new GPUs at wicked price points. They are not the rock stars their $800 dollar+, top of the line cards are but for starting at $160, they are pretty wicked at that price point..

I had trouble finding a review that actually tested more than playing a video game or two but Tom's hardware is always good for the latest hardware reviews and providing the bad with the good.

ATI Radeon HD5770 and 5750

Caveat: I haven't seriously compared cards in a couple of yyears, I just happened to see the specs on these somewhere and was surprised by the price point.

Unfortunately I'm not a member of that site, but I did find another post here , by the same person. If you read through, someone inquires about the heatsink in that case and he says that there is about 2 mm of space. It's also an extremely tight fit in my case; millimeters as he is saying.

I have called Antec a couple times and their customer service is pretty decent. You could always give them a call and inquire, it's your safest bet.

Some of their products have been hit and miss, i agree. Stick with the reviews though and find the gems that really work well.
The Zalman CNPS####X... (dumb long and incomprehensible item labels) copper fin cpu heatsink was a huge contender for best, most quiet HSF for some time. Granted the thing was the size of a Chinese water lily and weighed as much as my dog's lower torso, but one didn't need a high speed fan to dissipate heat.
It was a good design which oddly didn't work so well with some of their other product iterations.

Chris (Club Neon) walked me through my first full computer build. Many long work days later, it keeps ripping without a flaw. (Just knocked on wood!) It screams, is stable, and runs semi-intense CAD/CAM/FEA 2d/3d without a hickup.

Vital Stats:
SuperMicro Barebone Tower/4U S-1366 for i7 CPUs (Good layout, but short wires on optical drive section.)
Radeon HD 4870x2 2GB GDDR5 (Screams, but make sure you have enough power for it.)
Intel 920 i7 CPU (Great chip, check Tom's Hardware to see it keeps up with many of the overclocked models in real world tests.)
12 GB RAM (4x4x4) (Keep the tripple memory path in mind when budgeting - can't do 8 easily.)
Vista Ultimate 64-bit
4 TB Seagate Cuda Drives (Raid 1 x 2) [Suitably fast and big so far - and cheap now!)
2 23" Samsung LCDs (Too damn wide, but good for most applics.)
850 Watt Power supply (Lacked on 8 pin needed for the beast from Radeon! Made for a pain in the arse.)
Pioneer Blu-Ray burner (Plays BR movies smoth, and burns disks fast.)
Wacom Intuos4 graphics tablet (Cool!)
6 or 7 cooling fans (better have a good A/C path as the heat from this beast is a factor in a small office.)
Oh, and a Lexmark X9575 Wireless MFP - which kinda sucks for the price.

That's a really nice build Zimm. What speed is your CPU running at, and is it stock or have you overclocked yet?

Question:

My current desktop is 2-3 years and is pretty basic, but does what I need it to and runs pretty smooth. It currently is running window xp. Should I consider upgrading to windows 7 (it will be free through my school)

My computer is an 800 mhz pentium4 3.2 GHz processor, 4 GB of ram, and a built in 256 MB intel graphics media accelerator video card.

My wifes laptop is running vista and is about a year old. It also has 4 gigs of ram (I think.. maybe only 3 I'd have to check), a similar built in video card, but has a faster core 2 duo 2.something GHz processor. Perhaps I should put Windows 7 on this guy?

Any comments from anyone who ran windows 7 in beta mode and can compare it to vista or xp out there? Based on my computer specs would you suggest an OS upgrade?

I haven't looked into Windows 7 a whole lot yet but I believe I will convert my PC. Like you, XP is still doing everything it needs to do for me. However, after skipping Vista, I'm just craving to try a new interface. In any case, here is one thought that came to mind from your listed specs.


Not a deal breaker unless you need it but if your wife's laptop does indeed have 4GB, not 3, then hers will run the 64 bit version of Windows 7 because of her core 2 duo processor. That may or may not inspire her. Certain apps like Flash in the 64 bit browser are not working yet but I expect you could still use an old browser and this similar cure would probably suffice for any other compatibility issues. She would also be able to add more memory (assuming her MB allows for it) and actually utilize it for performance gains it because the 4GB barrier will be broken.

Either way, I wouldn't panic to load Windows 7 as you appear to be still happy with XP. In a year or two, you may need a new PC and it will undoubtedly come loaded with 7. That being said, if I got a copy for free, I'd be unable to resist loading it on something.

Yeah, I only get one copy and if I use it I must decide which computer to put it on. I'm leaning towards the laptop, but my wife says she hasn't even "gotten used to" vista so hates to upgrade.. it seems like the interface is pretty similar so maybe she wouldn't have a problem at all.

It may be 3-6 months before my school offers windows 7 for free anyway...

I have not overclocked it because I need it rock solid stable; and it is plenty fast for me as I have never had to wait for it. But I think it is 2.66Ghz, could be wrong.

David, I highly recommend Windows 7. I've been using it for maybe three months now in a dual boot setup with XP as my other OS, and I haven't booted back into XP; I like it that much more. It's a very user friendly operating system, and I haven't had any problems with a yet.

To give you an idea of my specs, I have a core two quad Q6600 overclock to 3.2 GHz and sometimes 3.6 GHz (stable passing prime, OCCT, and 20 tests of "maximum" IBT,), with 4 GB of ram.

I beta tested Windows 7 too and really liked it compared to XP. I would consider the upgrade for any computer I owned, but not for my wife. She's more of a creature of habit and probably wouldn't appreciate the improvements. She'd just be annoyed with the change.

I ended up getting impatient in the interim and built a system on Vista x64, so I'm a bit leery of running an upgrade to Windows 7 just because an upgrade never seems to be as reliable as a clean OS install, and I'm not willing to do that at this point because the pain of reinstalling everything would be too time-consuming.

Regarding SSD & Windows 7, to the OP, if it's just the idea/cool/geek factor of SSD that you like, more power to you and you have my envy. If you're really looking for huge and noticeable performance boots in everyday tasks, I'm not convinced from everything that I've read that it really will deliver a huge difference versus the extra cost you pay for the disk, even with Win 7's enhanced focus on SSD devices.

Obviously, that's just my opinion, but when I built my system ~6 months ago, I could not justify the price premium. Though maybe a lot has changed in 6 months. I haven't kept up with it as much since then.

I ended up with an Intel i7 920 (2.66 ghz, running stock), MSI X58 Platinum SLI LGA 1366 mobo, 4x1TB HDD, 6GB Patriot DDR3 1600, GIGABYTE GV-R485MC-1GI for the graphics card. I also picked up a combo Blu-Ray/HD combo drive from LG as it was very cheap at the time.

The graphics card I chose because it was one of the few (only?) reasonably capable cards that was fanless, and my primary requirement was silence vs. major gaming performance since I use it primarily for office/video editing rather than for major gaming.

Incidentally, I've recently started ripping Blu-Ray disks and streaming them to my PS3 from my hard drive over the network (using Twonky). I am still amazed that I can stream those videos with absolutely no distinguishable difference from the original disks. The rips do take up a lot of space (15-25 GB / movie), but for having your favorite movies at your fingertips without the need to insert disks, it's very cool.

Jason

Myrison,

Can you stream the HD surround sound formats with no problem?

Nice to see you around, Jason.

SSDs are getting cheaper, and I'm also buying it at a discount. Yes, it's still more expensive than a normal hard drive, but besides the performance gains, I'm sure I'll appreciate the silence and low power consumption.

As for video card, I imagine I'll go for one of the new DirectX 11 cards. It would be so nice to go fanless, but I doubt I'll have the option. We'll see. Who knows. In the end I might go for something from the last generation with the plan to upgrade it when there are more options available.

That's great to hear about ripping Blu-rays. I would love to do that at some point, but I'm not to the point of really looking into it.

Hey Charles, good to hear from you too.

David, to your question, no, the PS3 can only stream 5.1 AC3 [at least as far as I can figure out], so I convert the audio from whatever the original format is to AC-3. I honestly can't tell a difference, though I haven't done a ton of testing yet. At some point I might do a blind A/B test to see if I really can tell the difference, but for now I'm really just playing with it.

For Blu-Rays that I listen to often, it's nice to have them available at the click of a button without getting up to change disks (especially for music/concert Blu-Rays. The one other downside to streaming them is that the chapter markers do not remain in the streamed versions, so even though the PS3 can FF at 120x speeds, it's a little annoying compared to just dialing up the chapter you want.

Jason

You've figured out correctly. The PS3 can only do AC3 in streamed or from USB media. It takes a disc (AVCHD or Blu-ray) to put the PS3 into the other player mode which supports DTS and other lossless codecs.

If I do go with the Antec P193 case, I probably won't go for such a huge CPU cooler, just to be on the safe side. What are my options? I'm not really looking to overclock, anyway, so I just need something that performs well enough for the i7-975 processor. What's quiet and not too big?

Something like the Ninja mini would probably work well for you.

That looks cool, but it doesn't seem to be compatible with the CPU I'm getting. Scythe definitely has enough other options, though. I'll probably go with that brand unless someone comes along to make me doubt my choice.

Some reading for you in case you have a shortage of candidates for your chosen build.

There's also a number of good Thermalright models out there. They're not as huge as a Megahalem, and they perform as well or better, depending on which one you get and what fan you slap on it.

If you're not planning to over-clock, just go with the manufacturer's heatsink. That's all I've ever used. Either the one included with the CPU for desktop machines, or in the case of Supermicro's workstation/server barebones, the included heatsink.

What ever Intel/AMD includes with their chips is good enough to cool them by design. Although I do usually clean off their thermal compound and go with Arctic Silver 5, just because it is easier to work with, and does seem to help cool a bit more.

Thanks, Fred. Thanks, Ken.

Chris, I suppose I'll try Intel's stock cooler first, but I wasn't impressed at all with the one that came with my Q9650. It was quite a bit louder than the Zalman that replaced it. Thanks for the tip on the thermal compound.

Well, I submitted an information request to Antec about using the Prolima Megahalems with their P193, but it gave me no confirmation of my request, so I guess we'll see if it actually went through as the time passes.

Charles - this is the one I picked up. I use it with my i7 920 (Noctua NH-U12P)

I also do not overclock, but the noise level of the stock Intel fans drove me nuts. The Noctua may not qualify as small, but if it fits in your case, I can tell you that it is truly "whisper quiet" as they advertise and it dropped my average running temperature by ~5-6 Celsius. It's fairly expensive but does a very nice job.

I've seen Noctua mentioned at various sites. Good to know that it's as quiet as they say and performs well. It seems to be right at the same height as the Megahalems, though. Less than a mm of difference.

CV. The site I linked to has forums where you can ask questions about stuff like this. Unless its a very new case, someone there can probably tell you if it will fit.

But then I'd be cheating on the Axiom forums. Am I really cool enough to pull it off?

But it would be twice the sausage fest...

That's what I'd do. Not worry about finding an aftermarket to fit right away. See how you like the factory model. That'll also give you time to track down one that fits, and have first hand measurements of how much space you have to work with.

Get some AcrtiClean too, that'll make clean up after removing any heatsink much easier.

Got my release version of Win7 up and running today. Only took 6 hours to get the machine to have enough software installed to be usable. You know I have over 10,000 photos which take up 27 GB?

Chris. Does Intel provice better stock coolers with their more expensive cpus?

While I am very impressed with the stock cooler on my AMD, the Celeron I use for surfing makes a huge racket.

They do, generally.

Know what? I've never bought a Celeron. I'll have to defer on this one.

I will say that I hate Intel's current idea for heatsink retention. Those press-to-spread clips. They're worthless. AMD's screwed down heatsinks can't be beat on the other hand.

Heh. In the interest of full disclosure, I've never bought a celeron either. And my Core i7 is the only Intel I've ever owned. The stock HSF never came out of the box.

Fred, if when you said "better" you meant quieter, I'd say no. If you meant more effective at keeping cool, not sure as I immediately dumped mine for something different.

About 4 months ago I replaced a ~3 year old AMD dual core processor with an Intel i7 920 and remember thinking the Intel's fan sounded like a helicopter when I installed it. I believe I'm more sensitive to noise in my PC than average, but it really was loud. I knew the minute I turned it on I would have to replace it with something quieter.

Jason

The fan that came with my Intel Core II Duo when I built a good while ago is definitely the loudest thing in my box.

Quiet a statement considering I have a 10" fan built into a side panel. It performs nicely though. Especially now that it is using the full amount of 8GB of RAM that I salvaged from my Uncle's 'tossed aside' PC, thanks to Windows 7's 64 bit mode that actually works with things.

Jason. I'm not an over-clocker, so better=quieter.


So there is actually decent driver support for Windows 7 64 bit? I wanted to go 64 bit with vista, but the driver support just wasn't there yet.

When Vista first shipped, there was indeed a shortage of 64-bit drivers, but that was 3 years ago. In that time every manufacturer started shipping proper drivers. So unless you've got some really old piece of equipment there shouldn't be a problem. Especially if you're building a new machine, there's absolutely nothing to worry about.

The install process seems to automatically go retrieve the latest 'tested' drivers right from the common peripheral companies themselves.

After my fresh install to a clean drive, it already had downloaded the latest nVidia drivers and even extra software for my graphics card, my two monitors worked(and it immediately ran in the highest rez possible on both without me tweaking it,) the drivers and extra software for my web cam mysteriously appeared, my USB hard drive worked, USB flash memory worked, sound card worked, Cannon camera synced..... Everything worked with zero effort on my part.

Software wise, no problems with anything I have loaded so far.
- MS Office
- MS Visio
- Firefox (Note: Not a bug but Firefox tabs don't show as separate previews when you hover over the icon like the new Explorer does. I'm sure they will add the feature later.)

- Loaded Avast's 64 bit compatible anti-virus. Works great. Already saved my azz from a mistyped URL taking me to an infected web page.

- Just using MS firewall, for now.
- Plugged in my Zune and it automatically downloaded a 64 bit version of it's software.
- iTunes worked. (Had to reauthorize PC due to clean install.)

Perhaps most importantly, Everquest II works fine. In fact it's way better than ever now that it can use all 8 MB of RAM. Zoning is almost instantaneous now compared to before.

Only slight issue so far is that when I load my iGoogle home screen in 64bit Explorer, the gmail widget works but the hotmail one won't load. Works fine in 32bit Explorer or Firefox though and of course the actual hotmail web page is fine. So, pretty insignificant at this point.

However.... I should add that the new email client, "MSN Live Mail", allowed me to consolidate my I'net providers POP email, my Hotmail, and my gMail all into one. Very nice. You can see all unread emails in one convenient list, regardless of what type of mailbox it arrived in.

I'm sure there must be some leftovers but they sure seemed to have gotten 64 bit perfected compared to Vista, for sure.

Thanks gents. It was 2 years ago that I built my HTPC and drivers were still an issue then.

Hmm... I could upgrade to Windows 7 and pop some 2 gig sticks into my HTPC.

I hope not. That's the only thing that really locked up my computer: having about 20 tabs open in IE, and then hovering over the task bar. I hardly use IE, but have made sure to turn that off now.

Hate those mistyped URLs. I generally blame it on the booze, but bad typing is a good excuse.

That reminds me of the funniest URL issue I have seen. Check out these two sites; one pure business, the other, an old business: www.southcoastangelfund.com , not www.southcoastangles.com

Well, here's their response:



I do like how excited they are to be Antec Support.

Speaking of PC builds, yesterday I replaced my aging hard drive with a new 128GB SSD drive from Crucial (their M225 line).

For those of you who have never run their OS from an SSD before, it is an immediate and amazing change. My entire boot process from POST completion to Win7 login page is around 30 seconds (changed from about 90). However, that is just the beginning... From the time I type my password in and hit enter until Windows has completely loaded, including all of my startup programs (dozens), it takes FOUR seconds. Yes, FOUR. (this was easily a 90-120 second process before the upgrade)

On top of fabulously fast start up times, application use is also screaming fast. Excel, Word, Outlook, Firefox, etc. all open immediately after clicking the icon. (i.e. no loading bar, no delay. It is immediate)

I'm not sure I can go so far to say that the upgrade is worth what the drives cost right now, but if you are a computer geek (you're reading this thread, so you're probably dangerously close at the very least) and don't mind spending a bit more to get the newest technology, it is a very fun upgrade that you will immediately notice.

Happy Shopping.

Jason

Excuse my ignorance....

Aren't faster drives (10K and 15K) less reliable?

An SSD or Solid State Drive is all electronic flash memory so no whirling disks and rpm speeds to worry about. That is why they are much faster. At this point though, all you worry about is your wallet. Hopefully they will get cheaper as time goes by.

Murph is right that spin speed isn't applicable with SSD, but to answer your question, I hadn't heard that about 10k/15k drives. I work for a managed hosting company and the only thing we use are 10k drives or faster. (though maybe enterprise class drives don't have the same problems you've heard about with consumer grade drives).

Either way, just get an SSD and you don't have to worry about it.

Not as far as I know. Pretty much all SAS and SCSI server drives are 10 or 15K, and they're far more reliable than the 7200 and 5400 RPM SATA disks out there. I don't know if the 10K SATA disks are more or less reliable than the 7200RPM ones.

If you get the right SSD, if it doesn't get slower with time, if it doesn't erase all your data when you do a firmware upgrade...

My RAID1 15k SAS drives get me to the Win7 login screen in under 30 seconds also. The rest of your performance numbers are very much in line with what I see too.

As for 10/15k drives being less reliable, I've not found that to be true. But then again, I've always installed them with plenty of breathing room, and multiple fans blowing over them. That's just how server-class chassis are built. Although I had one 15k drive running on my desk with no fan, and just about burned myself when I touched it. They do get hot if not properly cooled. But SCSI/SAS drives have better warranties than SATA; I don't think drive makers would be taking the loss of longer coverage if they were more prone to failure.

Interesting about the drive lifespan...and I didn't realize that an SSD was solid state....

While on the subject of these 2.5" SSDs. Has anyone here seen a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter bracket, which would allow the 2.5" drive to be used in a 3.5" hotswap sled? The problem with all the adapter kits I've seen is they center the 2.5" drive in the bay. That's not a problem when running wires to the drive, but it is when plugging it into a fixed backplane. The data/power connectors on a 2.5" drive are the same distance from the edge as with the 3.5" models. So a proper adapter would only extend the side of the drive farthest away from the connectors.

I have blade servers which I'd love to remove all the moving parts from, but since they have 3.5" hotswap bays I'm left with using spinning disks, because that's all I can mount. ... I should probably just make them netboot anyway, because all their data is stored on an iSCSI server, and the boot drive would be useless if that machine wasn't available.

If you think USB 3.0 will be a need for you in the near future. Here is the first motherboard I have seen that has USB 3.0 with a pretty decent spec sheet to match. At least one that currently available.

Asus MB with USB 3.0

Hey, I was hoping some USB 3.0 mobos would hit before I got around to buying one. Thanks for the link.

My friend was finally able to get one of the 160 GB Intel SSDs, so now I'll really have to start getting the rest of the pieces of the system. I'm still unsure what I'm doing for motherboard, but it'll probably be a month or so before I buy one, so I have time.

I'm curious to find out if the 4 GPU support of the 4, 16x PCIe 2.0 slots on this board includes the use of 2-chip cards. The GeForce GTX 295 claims to support Quad-SLI.

I'm going to see if I can get one set up at work. Supermicro does have a barebones config with a very nice case and a 1400 Watt PS.

I'm sure it will do quad-SLI, but it sure ain't gonna do octo-SLI.

Oh, I see. When nVidia says, "Quad SLI", they mean dual, dual GPU boards. As up until now there's not been motherboards with 4, 16x PCIe slots.

But their SLI 2.0 spec does support 8+ GPUs. Wish I could find out if someone has tried this yet.

EDIT: Anyway, it doesn't matter for what I want to do. I'm looking for video compression using CUDA, not SLI for gaming. CUDA is fully supported on as many GPUs as you can get into a machine (found a mention of 12, and actual implementations of 8 GPUs: http://estoniadonates.wordpress.com/our-supercomputer/ ).

Oh, there's definitely been boards out there--just not ones that would take 4 dual slot cards... Several of the high end X58 boards have 4 x16 slots (admittedly not electrical, but at least x8 for each).

See my edit above, if you haven't yet. But yeah, this board has enough room for dual-slot cards, and as the specs say: 4 PCI-e 2.0 x16, 2 PCI-e 2.0 x4 (in x8 slot), & 1 PCI slot (The x4 and old PCI get covered up when using 4 dual-slot cards though.)