Zen and the Art of Pc building

[neomonkeus]

So one of the main drawbacks where I am working at the moment is not having a dedicated dev pc. I can't lug my dev pc with me during the week. So now that I have moar time^TM I can start into building a new pc as the actual dev pc in quiestion is 7/8years only.

Here is the link to the skeleton of the build - http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/BCZr

I am planning with future proofing in mind so that should be apparent from some of the choices in the build. Adding additional parts will be added down the line, doubling ram, additional card for SLI, additional storage, etc. The usual.

The main things that I am debating is PSU, dropping it to 750~800w. Mobo is probably the other. Currently floating between the Gigabyte and Asus as both are in the same price.

Feedback welcome.

[WindmillTilter]

Looks like a VERY sweet build. Based on the ASUS board you're looking at I assume you're comparing to the UP7 from Gigabyte. You can't go wrong with either board but personally I'm a big fan of the Maximus V and would stick with that. You certainly don't NEED 1000 watts for that build, but if you can afford it there's no harm. Considering you're thinking SLI in the future (and who knows what else, RAID array for storage?) you'll never regret having unused power potential but the opposite isn't true. That said I'm running a 750W myself, even with 6 drives and a fairly power hungry video card.

Good luck with the build and let us know how you decide to go (I'm already jealous).

WT

[shogran]

Please don't go with Gigabyte, I've had some serious trouble with them recently and had to switch to asrock. This asrock has been doing fantastic with me lately I love it to death.

[neomonkeus]

What was the specific problem you had sho with the Gigabyte, I had heard they were very good from other users. As for PSU, I am still unsure, as I will probably just go with dual SLI and will expand to multi disk storage which will be RAID'd but I can't see me pushing through 800w even with overclocking. Indecision is a terrible thing.

[Arion]

I'd go with the ASUS as well. I've had a number of problems with Gigabyte over the years. I guess the first time your computer catches on fire because of a bad short ont he board will steer you away. And that was just one of the problems.

[neomonkeus]

Yeah think I will stick with the Asus so then. I have gone for a different PSU which is less expensive, but I did some math and based on future expansion without OC the wattage is about 620w~ so not alot of headroom if I go with an 800w and this would not even include additional harddrives or cards. I might add a cheaper dedicated physics card or investigate video & audio capture cards.

[WillieSea]

All motherboards have the potential for being problematic.

I usually go with the Asus, but my last one only lasted about a 1.5 years before it gave out. I bought another Asus and its been in my computer for the last 5 years and still going strong.

[Jac]

I've had mine for about 2 years with only the onboard LAN not working. Well, that, and the onboard audio sounding like crap, but I knew it would going in, which is why I go with discrete cards.

[WillieSea]

I disabled the onboard sound and installed a sound blaster board. They are really quite cheap as long as you don't go with all the bells and whistles.

[HeyYou]

I disabled the onboard sound and installed a sound blaster board. They are really quite cheap as long as you don't go with all the bells and whistles.

What operating system you using? If you are using Vista, or something newer, are you using alchemy to make your hardware accelerated sound card actually do it's job?

[Jac]

What operating system you using? If you are using Vista, or something newer, are you using alchemy to make your hardware accelerated sound card actually do it's job?

That's only for EAX enabled games, HY. I use it on whatever games it says needs it.

[HeyYou]

It is my understanding, that with Vista, directsound was removed from DirectX, forcing all sound processing to be done by the CPU, Not the sound card..... Alchemy ostensibly intercepts the direct sound calls, and converts them to OpenAL, which does indeed actually use the hardware acceleration capabilities of the sound card.

[Jac]

You can install DirectX 9 alongside 10 & 11, HY; so if they did do that, it would be mitigated by using the older version. I haven't notice any real difference in games that use 9 & 10 so I don't know.

[HeyYou]

Simply installing DX9 won't help.

Windows Vista features a completely re-written audio stack based on the Universal Audio Architecture. Because of the architectural changes in the redesigned audio stack, a direct path from DirectSound to the audio drivers does not exist.^[7] DirectSound, DirectMusic and other APIs such as MME are emulated as WASAPI Session instances. DirectSound runs in emulation mode on the Microsoft software mixer. The emulator does not have hardware abstraction, so there is no hardware DirectSound acceleration, meaning hardware and software relying on DirectSound acceleration may have degraded performance. It's likely a supposed performance hit might not be noticeable, depending on the application and actual system hardware. In the case of hardware 3D audio effects played using DirectSound3D, they will not be playable; this also breaks compatibility with EAX extensions.

[neomonkeus]

Now to play the waiting game. Need to sort out what periphals I want, keyboard, mouse, too.

[Jac]

Alchemy solves a lot of those problems, HY. For those that it doesn't, Creative keeps a list of games and how to add sound back to them.

[HeyYou]

Alchemy solves a lot of those problems, HY. For those that it doesn't, Creative keeps a list of games and how to add sound back to them.

Yep. Sure does, and when I finally decide to move up (up?? well... you get the idea) to Win 7, I will be using it to make sure my nice hardware accelerated sound card is STILL doing its job.

[Jac]

I installed the OpenAL driver by Creative the other night and noticed a big difference in Mass Effect, especially in the council chambers when Shepard became a Spectre: everybody's voice had an echo in it like they were actually standing in a large auditorium.

[Arion]

I'm curious about this. I never really paid much attention to my sound card after I installed Win7. Oblivion, Skyrim and Morrowind sound fine to me but I was wondering about Alchemy. Just for the heck of it I went in and looked and it listed installed games as Morrowind and Oblivion but they weren'te enabled as Alchemy enhanced. I added them to the list but I don't really know if I actually can tell the difference. I'm running a Sound Blaster X-Fi Extreme Audio card. Should I really notice anythign different?

[Jac]

I believe EAX mainly provides environmental audio, so walking in a cave should provide the most noticeable change. Here's a good wikipedia article about it.

[WillieSea]

I have Vista. I have no idea what drivers its using, but when I am in Skyrim, and in a cave, the sounds are 'echoy' and reverberate. When I am in a big wood room, it sounds like I am in a big wood room. I have not had any problems with my sound.

[Emma1992]

All I know is when the time comes im going to upgarde me Graphics card and PSU, everything else is perfect. Im saving for a Raedon 7990 (6 gigs of DDR5 Video at 300 something Bytes)

[_echo]

All I know is when the time comes im going to upgarde me Graphics card and PSU, everything else is perfect. Im saving for a Raedon 7990 (6 gigs of DDR5 Video at 300 something Bytes)

You mean bits? It has 384 bits of bandwidth.

[neomonkeus]

Well started into the build on Tuesday as that is when the finally delivery arrived containing the Mobo, SSD & Ram. Bit of a fiasco where the "delivery company" apparently lost it, but on the day the "online store" were going re-send the order, it was miraculous arrived back to their warehouse. I suspect that it was lost internally in their warehouse.

Still all went well, though my room turned into a packaging maze. Took a while to get everything sorted as my case top was difficult to remove to install cool and sifting through which connectors which I would use. I could have built in a day but thoroughly took my time to enjoy the process. Need to finalise the cable management withcable ties on the back of the case as they were just loose tied while things got moved around.

Ran a smoke test while I was away over the weekend as suggested by Ron . The room being still intact and nothing melting down is a good sign. Going to put it through its paces this evening. Only have a barebones install, but will be starting into the tedious bit of re-installing more software that I need.

All I know is when the time comes im going to upgarde me Graphics card and PSU, everything else is perfect. Im saving for a Raedon 7990 (6 gigs of DDR5 Video at 300 something Bytes)

Any specific reason you are going for that card, rather than a crossfire setup. Most of those High End Profile cards for its performance/price ratio is only for those who are doing some serious computation power. Edited April 8, 2013 by neomonkeus

[donnato]

Yaayyy ... congratz Neo. I tried to take my time and savor the build too but once it stafted, it was like everything just jumped into place. After all the reading and info gathering, (being my first build) I was nicely prepared. when I fired up and heard that sweet, single beep...I kinda just melted.