Help Me Build My Computer

[Mr. Krystal]

I humbly ask those of you with hardware technical knowledge for your assistance! I know there's gotta be at least one really knowledgable computer tinkerer here.

I want to build a computer with a non-typical use-case. I'd like to tell you all what I want from my computer, and some of the details I've come up with, and I hope you can help me pick out the right components for the job. I've got the money to build it, but picking what parts and making sure they're all compatible, I'm just not sure.

I've spoiled myself with Apple computers for the past few years, so I'm completely out of touch with where the computer component market lies. I've upgraded and worked inside computers before, no big deal, but I've never assembled one myself. Any advice on that would be helpful too.

I'm a software engineer who programs for fun and profit. While I do plan on working on 3D graphics programming, I don't plan on working on absolute bleeding edge stuff. Actually, I'm more interested in WebGL, the browser-based OpenGL implementation. So, while I need GPU performance, it doesn't need to be top-of-the-line. I'm a gamer, but I mostly play games on consoles, so I'd like the ability to play indie games on Steam, but I don't need to play the latest and greatest games at full quality settings.

Because I do a lot of web development, I need to be able to have dozens or hundreds of web pages open at once, and probably 14 some odd other programs too. That's why I want to optimize for high memory.

Finally, I plan to dual boot it: Windows 7 and Ubuntu.

Now that you know my desires, here's what I've figured out of the specific details:

24 GB of RAM or more

Preferably so much RAM that I never have to worry about how many programs are open.

About 3.0 GHz processor with many cores

Many cores means lots of separate apps running in tandem. How many? I don't know.

Two GPUs

I need one GPU to run the OS's graphics specifically, and provide an interface for up to 3 screens for multi-screen development. The other GPU will be used purely for the graphics applications and GPU programming. I want to avoid restarting the whole computer if and when I crash my GPU. Furthermore, if I write a blocking GPU command, it won't freeze my screen this way. Both GPUs need only be middle-of-the-road in performance.

An SSD

Something like a 32 or 64 GB SSD to store most of my programs and the OS(s). Bonus if it can be installed directly into the motherboard via one of the slots. Then there will only be 1 drive bay needed (the other hard drive), see "NO optical drive" below.

A hard drive

A generic 1 TB drive for the media store, doesn't need to be that fast because the main speed bottlenecks will be addressed by the SSD.

NO optical drives

I don't have a need for any kind of optical drive. I do like 99% of my work using network transfers and USB-based drives. No floppy, CD, DVD, or Blu Ray drive required. If I can, I'd like to take advantage of this and get a case that is smaller because it doesn't require drive mount space.

Power supply

All the things above will need a power supply. I'd like to keep the thing cool and quiet, but quietness is not terribly important to me, just so long as it's not deafening. I'll defer to your expertise for how much power I need.

Case

As described above, a shorted case is an option, since there will be no optical drives. I'm not looking for a flashy case either. No size restrictions, but keeping it out of sight and mind below my desk is important.

Cooling components

Simple fans with basic heat syncs should do it, but like power supplies, I'm more ignorant on this subject than most of the others. Might need something a little advanced for the GPUs since there will be two of them.

For all this, I'd like to pay no more than around $1500, which should be plenty. This doesn't cover the cost of screens.

[CrypticQuery]

While I have little experience when it comes to computer building and component selection, here is a guide that seems to have quite a bit of helpful information;

http://www.diyallday.com/how-to-build-a-computer/

Besides going over basics it helps with component selection as well as general questions. Hope this helps, if not in the slightest bit! ^_^

["User"]

Like yourself, I used to know a lot about this kind of stuff back in the day and I've only been slowing getting into it more recently since I need a new computer as well.

http://educations.newegg.com/tool/psucalc/index.html This will help when it comes to calculating how much power you need.

I don't know what motherboard you currently have but it would probably be an excellent idea to get a top of the line motherboard to accommodate all that you need - both for now and into the future. I know in my case I can't add anymore RAM and am severely limited in PCI Express slots, among other things.

There are two categories of GPU's - one's that are really good for games and one's that are for high end rendering and other "work" related uses. While I'm sure that a very high end "all purpose" GPU will serve both needs nicely I am not completely sure on the specifics. If you are using three monitors and need two GPU's I'd hook two monitors up to one and the other monitor to the other. Also, you can hook up the monitor to the GPU that will be used the most often and for the heavy duty stuff.

The latest type of ram that's out right now is DDR3 - this is in a different shape than DDR2 or it's predecessors so only the latest motherboards will be able to use it. Also, consider the speed of the RAM itself and not just the total amount of GB's.

As far as cooling is concerned, don't worry about things like liquid cooling - not worth it unless you plan on doing some heavy duty overclocking and even that's questionable. It also helps if you have a good flow of air in and out so position the fans and such accordingly.

[LoneWolf]

Get a sandy bridge for your processor. I cannot stress how awesome watching my friend play Skyrim on medium settings without a GPU is. (besides an Intel HD graphics accelerator) Get one of the i7 Extremes and you're set. Or get something to tie you off and get an Ivy Bridge when those come out. I envy you.

Man, I want one of those. Also 24gb of RAM WTF? Pre-Load your whole operating system on the RAM, you could. EDIT: I agree with User, get DDR3. My graphics card runs on that and it's pretty solid.

Another thing worth mentioning: If you have any techie buddies that work for Microsoft, have them buy Windows 7 from the microsoft company store for you. Retail Price for Windows 7: $200-250. Microsoft company store price: around $100. Get Ultimate.

[Thu'um]

There are lots of sites that actually sell you customized builds. you simply choose what you want and they can assemble it and send it to you. try things like new egg or i build power. they will also sell you bundles which are rather useful if your worried about specific hard ware not being compatible.

[Icy]

I'm pretty tech-savvy and am making up a post for you. I'll post the full thing sometime tomorrow after I do some checking.

Edit: Or… just take a look at Steve's post below. He said everything better than I could. ;)

[Steve]

Alright, I frequent tom's hardware and newegg on a daily basis and I also build custom builds as a hobby.

First of all, let's cover the basics.

I'm going to go ahead and assume you are ok with building your pc, because getting what you want on a vendor won't be cost efficient!

Do you want to virtualize? or just dual boot? you can run any of your selected OS as the main host and just virtualize the other.

What's the screen res of the screens you are planning to get?

Here's the thing, and User covered it a little bit, there are two kinds of dedicated graphics , when it comes to gfx cards, the usual gamer/HTPC/normal cards and the work related ones. The work related ones are normally more expensive than the gaming cards, have of course, more horse power and cost a hell more. Here's the catch, even if they are more powerful, they perfom as well as low profile cards(in games) just because their drivers are not designed for gaming. Since these cards would kill your budget, I'll assume you will be fine with a normal setup of graphic cards.

You can't, for what I know CF/SLI work related cards and gaming cards, you would need to be using two different setups. Like you said, you don't design top of the notch graphics, so you should be ok with normal graphic cards. Since you are running multiple monitors, I would recommend AMD cards, in this case, either a pair of HD 6870 should do the trick, however if your intended resolution is "extreme", then a pair of HD 6950 2gb will work. A pair of HD 6870 will cost you around 300-350 and the 6950 2gb will go for around 550-600.

Now, next thing, for processor I would recommend an i7 2600k (3.4ghz), it's the best gaming/multitasking combo you can get. You get 4 cores/8 threads and you can overclock it pretty easily to 4.2 with air. That goes for about 320 dollars or so. If you want dedicated cores, you can go for the FX AMD series, they offer you 8 dedicated cores for a reasonable price (around 200 dollars), the only downfall is, they are not as good for games as intel stuff (Intel does offer eight core/16 thread solutions, but those things are heavily expensive) and they offer less cache.

For ram, I would say you don't need that much now, you can settle up for a triple channel mobo, buy a kit of 4gb x3 ram (12gb total) and then upgrade as you need. Ram is not expensive nowadays, so you can get away with 2 kits of good ram and achieve 24gb for around 150 dollars.

As for the storage solutions, I would recommend a 120gb SSD Since you are doing two os, you will need to have some space to install your dedicated programs. Sadly, with Thailand's floods, HD prices are going way up. The 120gb SSD goes for around 150-200 dollars and the HD shouldn't be more than 100 dollars.

As for the case and the mobo...here's the thing, I'm not sure you can achieve what you want with a mini ATX mobo and a small case. Small cases normally don't have room for mid+ range video cards, Also, mini ATX mobos don't have much room for ram or room for a CF/SLI setup. You could get away with a mid sized case though. This is probably the part you would need to consider because it will affect your rig completely, you can't get super storage/ram/dualgpu setup without sacrificing space.

Finally, the psu should be around 750w-900w depending on the cards setup you choose.

I'll throw you a link of a custom build just to give you some pricing examples http://www.tomshardw...e-ssd,3098.html . If you add more ram and the 2gb version of the 6950,and an eight core FX , you can get around your budget It also shows some performance benchmarks, both on productivity and gaming. I can help you further and more through-fully if you give me the name of the programs you use to develop (the 3D ones).

EDIT: if your concern is space, we could come up with something, there are dual gpu solutions that come in one card to save space (I personally know nothing about gpu dedicated programming, I'm just assuming you want something with 2 gpus, right?) You might have to sacrifice ram (16gb instead of 24gb) and your cooling options will be limited (better cooling=rig lasts longer).

I'm missing a crapload of details but I don't want to flood you with info right now, I would rather wait for your answer first.

[conaly]

Hi,

I'd not take an AMD FX CPU, as they are actually very slow.

If you want as many cores as possible for a "normal" price, I'd recommend an Intel Sandy Bridge-E 3930K. Six cores, twelve threads, 3,2GHz normal clock with turbo at 3,8GHz, unlocked multiplier so you can overlock it to about 4-4,5GHz with a good cooler.

The disadvantage: it costs around 600$ ans has no build in GPU. And you also need a X79 chipset mainboard, which cost right now somewhere between 200 and 350$. If you want to take it, then you should probably take one with a PCI-E3.0 slot. Many X79-Asus-Boards have just recently got a BIOS-Update, which gave the PCI-E2.0 an update to 3.0.

On the X79 MBs RAM uses DDR3-Quad-Channel, so 24GB is a bit odd. For quad-channel the best solution would be 16GB (4x4GB) or 32GB (4x8GB). This is important, as quad-channel requires four separate RAM-modules in the same size to work at its' maximum.

With GPUs I can't really help out, as I've never used a dual-GPU solution so far.

For power supply I believe you wouldn't need 900W, when you use only two GPUs, and one HDD+SSD, a 700-750W from a good brand (i.e. beQuiet!, Corsair or OCZ) would completely do it.

For the case I'd recommend one with at least two case-fans and where the power supply lies in the bottom corner! I use this one for example: http://www.ansarisha...1623685_n11.jpg

This is important, because with such case-type you get a good air circulation and the danger of overheating would be decreased. Otherwise even if you got a good cooler, the air just would stand relatively still in the case and would heat it up. The cooler is a bit critical then. The 3930K is shipped without a boxed-cooler and Intel recommends a water-cooling solution for the Sandy Bridge-E series. I'm not sure which solution is the best one here, as I haven't used water-cooling so far (I'm waiting for Ivy Bridge, so I'll build a new PC with water-cooling at the earliest in April). If you take one, you probably have to exchange one of the case-coolers with the radiator or screw it onto the fan (depends on water-cooling system).

A PCI-E SSD is useless, if you won't take at least two of them in RAID0, otherwise you spent much more money on something, you could get cheaper with the same result. A SATA-3 SSD would be enough.

So, that were my two cents, hope this helped a litte :-)

[Steve]

My main problem with Intel is the price , a 600 dollars processor and a 300 dollars high performance mobo will tear up his budget, specially if he wants a dual gpu setup. I admit that AMD can't match what Intel has to offer, but around the 150-250 price range, the best FX processor is competitive, for super multitasking, it's really a good bang for the buck. (depends on the applications he wants to run though). Water cooler solutions also add to the price. So far, only those 3 components (cpu,mobo and water cooling system) would add around 1000ish dollars. A dual gpu solution would bring that price to 1350 at least, and all the remaining parts would wind up putting the price away from the estimated 1500.

I recommended around 900-1000w in case he decided to go for a heavy gpu solution , I used newegg's power supply calculator for this.

Everything could go to hell though xD, as he might prefer a mini ATX solution and a smaller case.

EDIT: I use the same case as the one you suggested , great case.

[jesseboyd7]

Well said Steve and others. I would probably go for Steve's advice. Especially the RAM issue. RAM can still be expensive for high performance PCs, if you are interested in still 24GB of RAM get these babes: Kingston ValueRAM KVR1333D3N9K2/8G 8GB (2 x 4GB) DIMM 240-pin DDR3 1333MHz / PC3-10600 CL9 1.5V Memory. From geeks.com

I like your idea of having two OS on your computer. Maybe having a virtual machine with Ubuntu in it would probably be the best I prefer. The thing that drives me nuts on having two OS on your computer, Linux takes over the boot process to give you a selection of where you want to boot into.

[Mr. Krystal]

Get a sandy bridge for your processor.

I tend to agree. I'm intrigued with the integrated GPU, and they are more power efficient.

Also 24gb of RAM WTF? Pre-Load your whole operating system on the RAM, you could.

The thought occurred to me.

If you have any techie buddies that work for Microsoft, have them buy Windows 7 from the microsoft company store for you.

I work for a company with a Microsoft home software program. I think I can get Win 7 for like $30.

I'm going to go ahead and assume you are ok with building your pc, because getting what you want on a vendor won't be cost efficient!

Yep, my post said as much.

Do you want to virtualize? or just dual boot? you can run any of your selected OS as the main host and just virtualize the other.

Dual boot. If I want to virtualize Linux in Windows, there are programs for that, no special hardware required. Actually, more like triple boot. I also want to install Chrome OS.

What's the screen res of the screens you are planning to get?

Though I'd love to get higher than 1080p, screens that support it are prohibitively expensive, so let's assume 1080p for 1 to 3 screens. The second GPU will probably not connect to anything externally.

I'll assume you will be fine with a normal setup of graphic cards.

Yes, consumer level cards are fine, though again, one has to be able to support up to 3 HD screens.

I would recommend AMD cards.

AMD cards are more difficult to program (driver inconsistency) compared to Nvidia, but that may just be what I have to deal with. Also, why use two cards for a triple monitor setup when a cheap single card from several years ago could do it with one?

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/04/three-monitors-for-every-user.html

I would recommend an i7 2600k (3.4ghz) ... and you can overclock it pretty easily to 4.2 with air.

That was the one that seemed like the right one to do. It also has the latest-greatest GPU on the chip version apparently. I don't plan on overclocking. Also, I have a friend who works at Intel who might be able to get me a discount.

For ram, I would say you don't need that much now, you can settle up for a triple channel mobo

I'd rather just get it over with and not have to think about it anymore. Here's 24 GB for $125.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231357

I read somewhere that no Sandy Bridge processors (including 2600k) could support triple channel anyway, so there's no point in using it.

As for the storage solutions, I would recommend a 120gb SSD.

I'm going to have to disagree on that one. Windows 7 shouldn't have an install size larger than 7 GB or so, Ubuntu is even smaller. Chrome OS is around 2 GB. Also, though I may use a lot of programs, the programs themselves are relatively small. It's the 3D models, textures, and sound files that make games so big. I would not mind having to store my games on the normal drive. In which case, a 32 GB SSD should be plenty for my needs.

You can't get super storage/ram/dualgpu setup without sacrificing space.

That's fine. I figured the heat issue alone would mean a standard HEIGHT case, but since I don't need any optical drives, there's still the possibility of a shortened WIDTH case, am I right?

Finally, the psu should be around 750w-900w depending on the cards setup you choose.

What is the disadvantage of having a PSU that supplies more than I need? Inefficiency, waste heat, or just more money?

I can help you further and more through-fully if you give me the name of the programs you use to develop (the 3D ones).

3D graphics programs? I meant *I* build the 3D graphics programs myself. Literally, I can get by with a good text editor and a web browser with WebGL capability (Chrome). The only 3D animation program I might use is Blender, which will run smoothly on a nerfed Celeron processor, so don't worry about those benchmarks. I'm more concerned with my ability to run say 5 web browsers (100 pages at once), maybe 3 text editors, an IDE, Photoshop Elements, the command line, and a few other small utilities, all while playing music or watching a video on YouTube. I don't think they do benchmarks for this kind of use case.

if your concern is space, we could come up with something, there are dual gpu solutions that come in one card to save space (I personally know nothing about gpu dedicated programming, I'm just assuming you want something with 2 gpus, right?) You might have to sacrifice ram (16gb instead of 24gb) and your cooling options will be limited (better cooling=rig lasts longer).

My concern is NOT space. Space is a "nice to have."

No, not dual GPU on the same board. This needs to be literally a separate card. See, when a program crashes on a CPU, it's ok because the OS can stop any process at any time, and it maintains control over what happens on the CPU. On the GPU, you can pretty much do whatever you want, including write an infinite loop, which promptly freezes your screen, usually unrecoverable. If I'm using a separate card that ISN'T being used to display my screen to do some calculation, if it crashes, no big deal, I can continue to work, and also manually restart the card with a utility (which I wouldn't be able to see if the screen was frozen). As such, the second (hopefully much cheaper) card won't even be "on" most of the time. Actually, if we can't find one for less than like $50, let's just skip the second GPU thing and focus on good performance with 3 screens.

I'd recommend an Intel Sandy Bridge-E 3930K. Six cores, twelve threads ... it costs around 600$

That sounds way out of my price range and pretty much overkill.

On the X79 MBs RAM uses DDR3-Quad-Channel, so 24GB is a bit odd.

That's ok, I'll settle for dual channel DDR 3, and have three sets of two 4 GB sticks, equaling 24 GB.

For the case I'd recommend one with at least two case-fans and where the power supply lies in the bottom corner! I use this one for example: http://www.ansarisha...1623685_n11.jpg

I agree, multiple, large fans that push air straight through the case is the way to go.

My main problem with Intel is the price, a 600 dollars processor and a 300 dollars high performance mobo will tear up his budget

As before, I have a friend at Intel, and besides, the 2600k should be plenty for me. I don't need top of the line, just upper end.

[Steve]

Thing is, if I remember well, you can't CS and SLI cards that are not compatible, as in, you can't CS a 6870 with a 6450. As you know, processors and mobos may have integrated gpus, so that and a single card would suffice, however, it's outside my knowledge the method you are going to use to have both things going on, since windows either uses the integrated gpu or the card, maybe this is possible on Ubuntu? Like I said, if this is what you want, then you can get away with something really cheaper . Some lower end cards don't provide a good multiscreen support, specially on high res monitors. An nvidia GTX 560 should be enough then, that's around the 150-170 dollars range.

As for the psu, no, there's no problem on having a psu with more wattage than you need, it's actually wise to have something that will supply your demand, plus a little more (mostly in case you have like 10 different devices connected through usb and such). For example, if what you need to run your whole setup is 600w, it's wise to go for the nearest, bigger solution, in this case would be like 700-750w.

As for the case, the Antec three hundred illusion, the case Conaly suggested,is good indeed ( a little bit on the big size). I currently own the case as well, so I know it's a great case.

If you are not interested on overclocking, perhaps the i7 2600 would be better for you.

As for the SSD solution, since I thought you were going to be working with graphics (my bad) I suggested something a little bit bigger to store all your work related things on a fast device.

Everything else should be easy to choose, or you already know. I believe you can set up for a mid range graphic card if that's what makes you happy, hopefully I didn't misunderstood your graphic needs, again :P