Hello all, new to the community here. Looks like an excellent place in every respect from what I've seen so far.
As you can see from my title, I'm at the point where I'm ready to completely rebuild a new desktop system pretty much from the ground up. I'm in the process of selecting components, and I'd like some views and opinions about my chosen setup.
My current desktop system consists of the following:
Windows XP Pro 32 bit SP3
Asus P5E3 Deluxe motherboard
Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 at 2.4 GHz
Stock fan and heatsink
2 x 1 GB OCZ RAM
2 x Seagate Barracuda 320 GB SATA HD
Seasonic 430W PSU
Radeon HD 3400 graphics card 256 MB
Dell 2001FP 19" LCD
This is fine for everyday stuff that doesn't really need any horsepower. Where it runs out of breath is doing HD video editing and rendering and graphics, using Sony Vegas and Photoshop. I do a lot of both. After purchasing my Canon HF11 HD camcorder last year, moving up from Sony Handycam SD-resolution, things really slowed to an absolute crawl. When editing HD video on this platform, live video preview is almost unusable. I have to "pre-render" the full HD video files DOWN to a lower-res AVI, then edit that file, otherwise my system and graphics card simply can't display a high enough framerate to work with during editing. This defeats the entire reason to shoot HD, you end up with a lower-res finished product. And the renders take forever, with the system at full blast with fans screaming. So, it's time to step up significantly here.
Here are my component selections for the new build. All are selected from Newegg, but course I'll shop around first.
OS - Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Motherboard - Asus P8P67 Deluxe B3 revision
Processor - Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz
Fan and Heatsink - Noctua NH-C12P SE14 140mm
Memory - G.Skill Ripjaws Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333
Hard drives (these are from my current system):
2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 3.0Gb/s
1 x Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB 7200 rpm 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
Power supply - SeaSonic X Series X650 Gold
Graphics card - ASUS ENGTX560 TI DCII TOP/2DI/1GD5 GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16
Blu-Ray/DVD Optical Burner Drive - Sony SATA Blu-ray Burner BWU-500S
Whew! I think that covers all the bases. Now for a few quick questions that might qualify (or disqualify) my choices.
Should I go with 32 or 64-bit on Windows 7? Being that all the hardware will be new, should be compatible. Browsing MS's compatibility website, all my peripherals are good to go. Sony Vegas 9 and Photoshop might need upgrades.
According to what I've read, and checked with PSU calculators, will the Seasonic 650W PSU be OK for this build?
How about my graphics card choice? I don't want to break the bank on this, but get decent performance for my applications. The last thing I want is a very expensive, finicky hair-dryer heating my room up and running my power bill up!
Maybe the 16 GB of memory is overkill, but it's a great price on that much, and might as well go ahead just in case for future applications.
I found out about the Noctua NH-C12P SE14 cooler while reading reviews, WOW, how beautiful AND functional, the Mercedes Benz of the breed! I was hooked after checking them out, they are some of the very finest hardware available. I have a Lian-Li mid-tower case which has good width, so it should go in fine. I may tinker with OC'ing, but not a big priority. It's like driving a Veyron, it's totally capable of all demands when you decide you're ready to put your foot in it.
Complete tab for the build comes to $1484 + shipping from Newegg. What would you add or toss if you were building it?
As you can see from my title, I'm at the point where I'm ready to completely rebuild a new desktop system pretty much from the ground up. I'm in the process of selecting components, and I'd like some views and opinions about my chosen setup.
My current desktop system consists of the following:
Windows XP Pro 32 bit SP3
Asus P5E3 Deluxe motherboard
Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 at 2.4 GHz
Stock fan and heatsink
2 x 1 GB OCZ RAM
2 x Seagate Barracuda 320 GB SATA HD
Seasonic 430W PSU
Radeon HD 3400 graphics card 256 MB
Dell 2001FP 19" LCD
This is fine for everyday stuff that doesn't really need any horsepower. Where it runs out of breath is doing HD video editing and rendering and graphics, using Sony Vegas and Photoshop. I do a lot of both. After purchasing my Canon HF11 HD camcorder last year, moving up from Sony Handycam SD-resolution, things really slowed to an absolute crawl. When editing HD video on this platform, live video preview is almost unusable. I have to "pre-render" the full HD video files DOWN to a lower-res AVI, then edit that file, otherwise my system and graphics card simply can't display a high enough framerate to work with during editing. This defeats the entire reason to shoot HD, you end up with a lower-res finished product. And the renders take forever, with the system at full blast with fans screaming. So, it's time to step up significantly here.
Here are my component selections for the new build. All are selected from Newegg, but course I'll shop around first.
OS - Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Motherboard - Asus P8P67 Deluxe B3 revision
Processor - Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz
Fan and Heatsink - Noctua NH-C12P SE14 140mm
Memory - G.Skill Ripjaws Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333
Hard drives (these are from my current system):
2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 3.0Gb/s
1 x Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB 7200 rpm 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
Power supply - SeaSonic X Series X650 Gold
Graphics card - ASUS ENGTX560 TI DCII TOP/2DI/1GD5 GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16
Blu-Ray/DVD Optical Burner Drive - Sony SATA Blu-ray Burner BWU-500S
Whew! I think that covers all the bases. Now for a few quick questions that might qualify (or disqualify) my choices.
Should I go with 32 or 64-bit on Windows 7? Being that all the hardware will be new, should be compatible. Browsing MS's compatibility website, all my peripherals are good to go. Sony Vegas 9 and Photoshop might need upgrades.
According to what I've read, and checked with PSU calculators, will the Seasonic 650W PSU be OK for this build?
How about my graphics card choice? I don't want to break the bank on this, but get decent performance for my applications. The last thing I want is a very expensive, finicky hair-dryer heating my room up and running my power bill up!
Maybe the 16 GB of memory is overkill, but it's a great price on that much, and might as well go ahead just in case for future applications.
I found out about the Noctua NH-C12P SE14 cooler while reading reviews, WOW, how beautiful AND functional, the Mercedes Benz of the breed! I was hooked after checking them out, they are some of the very finest hardware available. I have a Lian-Li mid-tower case which has good width, so it should go in fine. I may tinker with OC'ing, but not a big priority. It's like driving a Veyron, it's totally capable of all demands when you decide you're ready to put your foot in it.
Complete tab for the build comes to $1484 + shipping from Newegg. What would you add or toss if you were building it?