ChangBanger

I've been eye-balling an i7 for almost a year now and I finally pulled the trigger. Hopped on Newegg and dropped a grand and recycled a few things from my Core2Duo build...

What I got...
Corsair H50 (Watercooled CPU cooler)
Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600
Intel i7 930 (Stock clock @ 2.8GHz)
EVGA X58 ATX (LGA 1366)
Zalman 6 fan controller
Samsung DVD Burner
Coolermaster HAF 932



What I recycled from my previous build...
XFX Nividia GeForce GTS250
Soundblaster Audigy 24bit
Corsair HX520W Modular PSU
Western Digital Black 1TB
Western Digital Blue 320GB
Xigmatek XLF 120mm fan

After a few hours of installing and cable managing...









Planning on replacing top 240mm fan with two Xigmatek 120 XLF 120mm's. As well as buying a 4pin PWM splitter to run two of the stock H50 120mm fans as push//pull (they're actually Akasa fans) or buy two Akasa Vipers as push//pull. Maybe if I get ambitious, I'll take out that side 240mm and put four 120mm's in it. If anyone's curious... Temp in the room is 24 Celsius... mobo is displaying 24/25 Celsius (on mobo display) CPU at stock is 40/37/40/36 Celsius on idle and GPU is 55 Celsius idle. My buddy's i7 920 with an H50 with two Monsoon 120mm running in sync that's clocked at 3.5GHz is averaging around 40-44 Celsius on idle... I think they're ok fans but I've read with Akasa Vipers or Apaches clocked at 4.2GHz were idling around low 30's, with the pull fan on max and push on PWM. Just throwing this out there cuz I was hoping there's some PC enthusiasts on Azine?

justnspace

iTrader: (1)

Beast of a machine!

I wish I had the coin to drop on a new system, What do you use the rig for? everyday use?

Lightus

Nice build! Now all you need is some Fermi.

ChangBanger

Everyday use, my excuse for building this was because Starcraft 2 is coming out hopefully the end of this month. I'm not much of a gamer, but I do still play Starcraft and Diablo 2 lol. Real system stressers.

I wish, I might be buying my buddy's GTX280 for $200 (trying to get a few bucks lower lol) cuz he wants an ATI 5850/5870. I just don't know if it'll be worth it cuz I don't game very much.

Lightus

I would try to get the price a little lower. I bought a EVGA GTX 280 at $260 about a year ago. I'm not sure if one year worth of use is only worth a $60 discount.

Then again $200 for a card that can run Crysis on full isn't too bad of a deal.

fsttyms1

Nice, i really need to build a new system one of these days

ChangBanger

Yeah, I don't know if I really want to buy the card. After I run two Corsair fans in sync on the radiator then I'll see how much more I gotta spend. The second fan would probably help, but I'm really leaning on two Akasa Vipers plus a PWM splitter, two Xigmatek XLF's so I'm sitting at another $60, and I need more HDD space... Another WDD Black 1TB lol... so what roughly $160 so I don't know if I want that card. Plus my GTS250 plays everything his GTX280 does just I can't run 1920x1080 on max in a few games. I think I can live with that.

#1 STUNNA

Bro you need to go SSD! I got 2 Intel 80GB SSDs running in a RAID 0 array and I get over 500mb/s sustained reads and about 115mb/s random writes, INSANITY!

ChangBanger

I was thinking about buying a 64GB as an OS drive but I'm strapped for cash.. I posted a few posts back I need some 120mm fans. Spending about 60 bucks on a few fans and I'm looking to push my i7 to 4GHz then buy a WDD Black 1TB... Then hopefully spend some money on my car, or my bicycle, or just spend more on my computer. lol

whynot

I heard those 120mm fans are pretty good at keeping potential girlfriends at bay

AMGala

iTrader: (4)

Looking sweet! That case looks nice, and that top fan is HUGE. Is there a vent for that fan on the bottom of your case in front of the PSU, or is that just to circulate the air inside the case? I'm planning a similar build in the next couple of weeks:

New:
Intel Core i7-930
EVGA X58 FTW3
XFX GT 240
6 GB OCZ Reaper HPC
Corsair H50
2 x Western Digital Caviar Black 1.5 TB (that I plan to run in Mirror RAID, first time I'm using RAID)

Recycled:
Antec P180 case
Samsung 750 GB HDD (for OS)
Asus SATA DVD-RW
Pioneer PATA DVD-RW
Soundblaster X-Fi XtremeMusic
Seasonic 600W PSU (I actually also have the Corsair HX520, but I think it may be a bit underpowered for all of the components I'll have)

Of course I would love to get a SSD for the OS drive, but they are just too expensive for me for the amount of space I'd get.

I can't wait!

ChangBanger

....?

Sweet sounds like you're getting pretty much the same components as I did minus the HDDs. I was actually looking into buying a Seasonic PSU, there's one that's fully modular. Not like regular modular but like every cord that comes out of it is modular. As far as my case, the bottom has two vented spots for 120mm fans (one is covered by the PSU because you can top-mount or bottom-mount the PSU). Yeah the stock fans are all huge, front 240mm red LED, side and top are 240mm and the rear was a 140mm. Great cable management and good build quality too.

AMGala

iTrader: (4)

240mm front, side AND top fans?!? That's crazy (in a good way). How quiet is your computer? Of course, larger fans are great because they can move more air at a lower RPM and thus make less noise.

ChangBanger

When that bottom Xigmatek is on low/medium speed I hear next to nothing from my case. But when its on high you can hear a slight hum but that's about it. I love that fan being there because the fan sits right under the fan of my GPU.

#1 STUNNA

Waste of money.....

Pushing your i7 to 4GHz and getting 1TB black isn't going to give you the performance boost one SSD will and I have an i7 and a 1TB black. Your i7 will be crazy fast but guess what it's just gonna be sitting there waiting on your hard drive to send it data where if you had an SSD it could send 2.5x-50x (depending on the situation) more data than a black could so your i7 would have something to do besides waiting on a slow drive (comparatively).

Once you've used an SSD and watched your OS boot in 10-15 secs and watched apps open as soon as you click them even photoshop and watched everything respond instantly instead of waiting, you'll never go back. Overclocking your i7 and using the fastest most expensive RAM will never give you those instant results as long as you have a hard disk drive as your OS drive.

I just don't understand spending all that money on the other parts of your system and then putting severely choking it's performance by tying it down to a hard disk drive.

ChangBanger

Well, once I buy those fans for my radiator I can overclock without having the worry. But as far as the SSD's I want them, but right now I'm a student looking for a job (because I don't have one) and the SSD is too far out of my reach price wise.

#1 STUNNA

I wouldn't spend the money on all the extra fans and the black drive, I'd spend that money on an SSD. that's my point. Your system is only going to be marginally faster if you overclock, where it'd be dramatically faster with an SSD for about the same price.

Srb

^
Might as well spend that money on your cl first and then get that SSD once you have a good source of income.

TeknoKing

I cordially hate you

svtmike

Don't. His SSD's ain't gettin' no TRIM.

ChodTheWacko

SSDs are nice, and you don't really need to get a big one.

You should use one for your OS boot drive, and your Applications drive, but you don't necessarily need/want to put application data on it - just stuff that is accessed often enough, and causes enough of a delay that you will gain a noticeable benefit.

You still need a good cpu for frame rates, and rendering times (for photos/video).

- Frank

ChangBanger

The drive isn't really on my priority list but the fans for my radiator are. Ambient room temp is usually around 25 Celsius and with the H50 my cores are usually around 37-40 Celsius. My buddy's 920 (clocked at 3.5GHz) is idling around a couple degrees more with a push//pull with Monsoon fans and I just want to get my temps a lil lower because I'm paranoid. I know the benefits of the SSD, you don't gotta kill me man lol. I was looking at some SSD's on Newegg and I'm thinking about an OCZ 60Gb, once I get a job. Plus, it'll be another 200 bucks that won't go into the car which will frustrate Srb and make me chuckle.

Lightus

With all this talk about SSD's I figured this might be useful.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2829/1

It's a well written article that tells you exactly what's happening in that SSD and the drawbacks/advantages associated with it.

NSX-Tuner

Reminds me of one of those scifi evil computers:


Proteus IV - Demon Seed


Colossus: The Forbin Project

BigLizard

cool, reminds me of my computer.

#1 STUNNA

I'm interested to see how much of a difference that makes. my system would have to slow down a hell of a lot to make a difference. I'm sure they'll work something out in the future but in the meantime

Lightus

Read the link I posted. Makes a huge difference...errr, sorta. Performance drops of used drives without TRIM can be as large as 72.4%. Of course when latency is measured in fractions of milliseconds a 72.4% increase will still be blazing.

Or you could just buy a drive like an Intel X25-M G2 with TRIM support.

#1 STUNNA

I know all about TRIM and I read most of that article months ago and I DO have an Intel X25-M G2, I have TWO of them in a RAID 0 array which doesn't support trim.


http://www.anandtech.com/show/2829/20

Anand agrees with me you're wasting your money doing stuff that's going to give just a couple % improvement points and a few more FPS which you cant even see difference or for about the same price you can get the above. It just don't make sense.

Lightus

Oh okay, cool.

I agree with you, I just misinterpreted your post. I thought it was a little odd that you wouldn't know the effects of TRIM , but figured I'd help you out. (which was obviously not needed)

I think the primary reason most people have a hard time buying SSD's is because when buying storage people are trained to think in purely gigs-per-dollar ratios. It may be hard for some people to justify spending 2-4 dollars per gig, as they are "stuck" on thinking in terms of storage rather than purely in performance. Thus causing the buyer to belittle the true importance of a fast drive.

Not really a good excuse, but I've heard worse.

infamousTL

nice build

AS3.0CL

nice build, i'm starting to think of doing a build but use the i7-875K processor and Asus Maximus 3 and the Intel x25M. of course there will be other stuff in it. i'm big into gaming so a good video card will be used just. Then after seeing the Crosiar H50 and what a push pull setup can accomplish as far as cooling i could push the core to almost 4Gz safely.

BigLizard

^^^The H50 is badass! I have it hooked up push pull style. 2 Kaze 3000 RPM 38cm fans in the front, 2 80mm in the extra dvd slots, 1 140mm on the side, and 240mm on the top. You can feel a Hawaiian breeze coming out of the back and the front.

The ultra kaze fans are wired up to fan controllers so they aren't so loud when turned down when the computer isn't under heavy load.

ChangBanger

Why do you two still bash on me for the whole SSD thing? I need fans on my radiator cuz I'm paranoid. I don't have a job, I'm a student and I don't really have the money for a SSD. I posted several times I WANT one, but wanting one doesn't magically make one appear in my computer. TB's are on tigerdirect for 40 bucks, and around 55 on newegg. So... 200 vs 40 because I'm trying to phase out my WD Blue so I can add another drive to my media center.

AznImports602

Sweet system! I was thinking of building my own machine too, is it easy to do?

Stapler

It's like a snap tight model. Pretty hard to mess up. Unless you are sent a bad part, then you may need some diagnostic skills to figure out which one it is and send it back.

ChodTheWacko

OCZ released new firmware for their drives with TRIM support.
They had this annoying ass firmware update system though - I was an early adopter, phased out for a bit, and had to apply 5 firmware updates IN ORDER to get to the latest one! Geesh.

- Frank

ChodTheWacko

Well, truth be told, getting a faster drive generally doesn't make any program run faster. That's why there's generally a lack of attention on it. System runtimes are down to CPU, memory speed, and video speed.

What people lose sight of is the time you have to screw around inbetween the 'run times'. Faster hard drives have always existed, and they have always improved overall system response time. SSDs haven't changed that - they just pushed the difference further (and worsened the price/GB ratio).

Side note - it's quite surprising to me that SSDs don't save you much battery life on laptops.

And ChangBanger, we aren't bashing your system anymore - we're just hijacking your thread. Welcome to AZ.

- Frank

ChangBanger

Not bashing it anymore? Lol I love my i7 The highjacks cool. Oh yeah, guys who have SSD's, how long have you guys had yours? (+brand/model) I think I'm going to skip the C/T Icebox and buy a SSD.

Lightus

Yes. Most gamers save money by getting normal drives, as it's almost always your graphics card that is holding you back.

Thank you for clearing the "bashing" up btw. I never was trying to bash ChangBanger, hell I don't even own a SSD myself. I got a Velociraptor instead.

I'd say go for the Icebox. I got one on the TSX. I can't tell you how much of a difference it makes in speed as I installed a new exhaust manifold at the same time. I can tell you however that it sounds MUCH better.

#1 STUNNA

I just bought a Corsair H50 today! It better be uber quiet cause that's why I bought it! Is it hard to install?