New PC planning time.

[G.A. Heath]

After I went to work Saturday my desktop PC decided it was time to give up the ghost. This machine was originally built nearly 8 years ago and in 2004 the motherboard, processor, memory and hard drive were upgraded due to a faulty surge suppressor, other components were replaced but not upgraded at that time. Since then this system has run flawlessly and until recently and it has out performed many much more modern systems.

Seeing as how this machine was a good performer I decided to build a much better system that should last me longer (performance wise) than the current machine. So my plan is to build the system with an antec 1200 case and 1000w power supply, AMD 6 core processor, ASUS crosshair IV motherboard, 8 gig of ram, 2 6.0Gb/s SATA hard drives(1 Tb each), A decent video card (massive heat sink, preferably fanless), SATA DVD+/-RW drive, Creative Labs X-FI PCIe Sound card, and a PCIe N-WiFi card.

So I am looking for suggestions, and advice on the hardware I am considering and suggestions on changes. I do not want to hear anything about operating systems, software, or Intel Vs AMD (Intel will not get any more of my money due to a previous issue I had with them).

[Liberty]

You don't tell us how you use your system and how you might stress it.
You might consider using a raid configuration.. 1 terabyte is huge... a lot of data to lose.

[G.A. Heath]

lol, I did neglect covering the most important part of the planning stage. The system will be used for daily use, gaming (Small stuff), compiling code (Main reason I need a major power upgrade), audio recording and editing, home print server, multiple operating systems (32 and 64 bit variants), and on from there.

[PBratton]

Good list. I'm planning an update to the x6 processor myself.

Currently running an X4 and it's been flawless. As I will run at 100% for long periods of time, I replaced the factory heat sink, (which could not keep up), with a Cooler Master Hyper Z600R heat sink. They also have a V8 and V10 heat sink available.

Just make sure you have good Air Conditioning in the house, when mine runs at 100% it creates a good heat wave.

Good luck! Let us know how it comes out.

[G.A. Heath]

I have never liked integrated audio or video components. Although I should point out that I am debating the PCIe audio card as this particular motherboard already uses creative labs X-Fi components. The CPU fan/cooler is something I am still looking into for my system as I usually go with an aftermarket unit and simply hang on to the OE part as an emergency spare.

[hheremtp]

With all that power and heat you might want to consider water cooling. the other thing to consider is using 2 WD velociraptor drives as your OS and program drives, Just put them on a raid array and stripe them. then use your 2 1TB drives as pure storage. Actually if you really want to get fancy you could go with 4 1tb drives on a raid array being mirrored.

[gigag04]

I used to be into building and OC'ing boxes....LED's inside the case...all that. Then I switched to Macs :)

Your build seems like it will work fine - there are tons of great studio grade soundcards out there. If I were building one up from scratch I'd go with a protools centered setup.

[loneranger4x4]

I have never liked integrated audio or video components. Although I should point out that I am debating the PCIe audio card as this particular motherboard already uses creative labs X-Fi components.

if I had it to do over again, I would use the onboard audio and get a firewire recording interface for recording audio. it makes it much easier to get a clean signal into the pc. I do most of my editing through headphones anyway, so the money I spent on the sound card was a waste for me. Todays motherboards come with built in sound cards with all the bells and whistles anyway.

[HeeHaw]

Just from your specs, 1000watt power supply is a bit over the top. In my personal PC right now, I have a quad core Intel, 8 gigs ram, 6 HDs, a 8800 GT video card, 2 cd drives, and I am running it with a 550 Watt Roswill power supply and have never had a problem. I am an IT manager at a bank and also do computer services on the side and have used over 70 of those Roswill 500 and 550 watt power supply in everything from gaming machines, to video surveillance, and business and home use PCs and have only had 1 fail so far in about 4 years of use since I started to use them. This is the 500 watt version, I have been very happy with them. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817182076

Anyway, just thought you could save a little money and spend it towards a better video card or something like that.

As far as sound cards. I recently put one of these in my media PC and wow what a difference it make over the onboard sound. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829271002

[terryg]

I used to be into building and OC'ing boxes....LED's inside the case...all that. Then I switched to Macs :)

Ohh ouch.

I don't want to hijack this thread, but I have to ask: You do realize that Apple is the new Microsoft, right?

[OldCannon]

Got a secret for ya: Unless you're an insane audiophile/audio engineer/MIDI musician, a separate sound card is quite pointless. Hogs up a spot on your PCI slots and adds no significant value. When Windows Vista (and beyond) was built, there was a specific decision to remove DirectSound and DirectSound3D from the Hardware Abstraction Layer (I used to be on the Windows Gaming team at Microsoft). This means that all the sound work is handled through the media layer now. It doesn't mean your sound card is obsolete, but just that the overall effect is negligible for DirectSound benefits. Of course, if the game/app supports OpenAL and your sound card supports that, you're in luck, but that's the exception rather than the rule.

Some more advice:
1) If you're using virtual OS images, consider a Solid State Drive. 256Gb models are pretty affordable, and make a big difference with games and virtual drive images.
2) Get all the CPU you can if you're doing a lot of VM work, multiple cores is more important than clock speed (those fractional clock speeds don't really mean diddly anymore, so maximize cores first)
3) Absolute best bang for the buck for graphics cards right now is the NVIDIA GTX 460 1Gb. However, do your own research, since I work for NVIDIA right now and that pretty much means any endorsements of GPU boards right now would be suspect However, if you want low-power and high-throughput, it really does a great job. The nice thing is that you don't need a behemoth power supply.

[OldCannon]

I don't want to hijack this thread, but I have to ask: You do realize that Apple is the new Microsoft, right?

That's not true. If it was "The New Microsoft", its stock value would have been averaged flatlined for the last 8 years.

[GenuineThreadHijack]
Ballmer needs to be fired
[/GenuineThreadHijack]

[HeeHaw]

Got a secret for ya: Unless you're an insane audiophile/audio engineer/MIDI musician, a separate sound card is quite pointless. Hogs up a spot on your PCI slots and adds no significant value. When Windows Vista (and beyond) was built, there was a specific decision to remove DirectSound and DirectSound3D from the Hardware Abstraction Layer (I used to be on the Windows Gaming team at Microsoft). This means that all the sound work is handled through the media layer now. It doesn't mean your sound card is obsolete, but just that the overall effect is negligible for DirectSound benefits. Of course, if the game/app supports OpenAL and your sound card supports that, you're in luck, but that's the exception rather than the rule.

Now that there is interesting intel. Thanks for sharing.