Project : Undefined OC3D

[diabloxx]

Hey All,

Been reading on here for some time and since I can now afford my new PC custom build I thought I would get your advice.

I've got about £1700 UK to spend and doing my research i've opted for the following. Now it must be said its been about 10 years since I put a PC together lol, so it might be new to me and i might be missing a trick. The below is everything i will be buying. will i need any other cables or anything else. thx !!

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 LGA775 'Yorkfield' 2.83GHz 12MB-cache (1333FSB)

not sure whether to get the above or extreme quad 3.00Ghz and downgrade the below to fit in on budget

2 x OCZ Core V2 60GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-2C60G) - Which I will be running RAID wohoo

G.Skill 4GB DDR3 PI PC2-12800C7 1600MHz (2x2GB) CAS7 Dual Channel Kit (F3-12800CL7D-4GBPI)

Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7200S 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Silver) -I only need it to read the game DVD when im installing Warhammer online hehe

Thermaltake VD4000SWA LCS Aluminium Kandalf Full Tower - Silver - comes with a basic water cooler

Tagan PipeRock TG1100-BZ 1100w Modular BZ Series PSU - might be over-kill but I want the system to be future proof when i put in my mass storage (velociraptor) next month followed by a second gfx card

Foxconn BlackOps Intel X48 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard - i chose this over the 790i Ultra because it supports 4870 X2, which I plan to add another in a few months.

HIS ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2048MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI - i was in two minds on this, whether to go for one 4870 or sli the new 280gtx

I've got a 1080p 42" LCD which I will be using for my games, I do realise the GFX card might be overkill for that small res, but I welcome discussion and your input - I also read somewhere that the 4870 struggles at low resolutions. so any help on the above would be awesome !!

FYI - based on everyone's reco's i will be buying the equipment next friday (week today)

thx everyone and sorry for the LARGE post, but i worked so hard to afford this pc hehe. Also i've sourced these parts from overclockers.co.uk - but i have been reading their customer service is bad, does anyone recommend anywhere else.

 

[Pseudonym]

Pfft, that's a really nicely laid out post. £1,700 is a good pile of money.

One question, what are you using to cool it? You may want to invest in some decent air cooling/water cooling if you want to run all this top end equipage, especially if you're going to run 2 4870 X2's. They are going to pump out a lot of heat.

Saying that, i don't know huge amount about hardware, so you should definitely wait out for somone who does. Looks like a asweet build and i hope it goes well for you. Get some pics of the build progress as it goes.

 

[ace8uk]

I personally wouldn't go for the Case with pre-installed watercooling, especially the thermaltake one as the components they use are no good. If you want a watercooled case but don't want the hassle of setting up the watercooling yourself, might I suggest something like this http://www.watercoolinguk.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=88&products_id=1094 or this http://www.watercoolinguk.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=88&products_id=861 or pay a watercooling shop such as aqua-pc's or watercooling uk to set up some watercooling in a case of your choice.

 

[ionicle]

looks like a decent spec

if you dont want the hastle of watercooling, that rig could be aircooled, but you would need third party coolers for the 4870's and a damn good cooler for the quad core

i would sugest, for the latter, a tuniq tower

 

[diabloxx]

thx for the replies guys'

I was hoping to use that case with the basic watercooling just for the CPU and air cooling for the 4870. Then in a couple of months add on a block for the gfx card. Or even upgrade to a Zalman Reserator then after that buy a new case. At that point I would overclock

I would consider swapping from the kandalf FTower to the NZXT Tempest, if it comes with a block for the CPU and for the 4870x2

Does anyone have any experience in using RAID on SSD's ? I'm having dreams of the boot up speed lol

 

[ace8uk]

I know you only want to watercool your cpu, but trust me, if ou go for thermaltake watercooling you will regret it in the future. Just get in touch with a watercooling distributor and see what they can do for you. The zalman reserator is also a bad cooler, and the pump is very bad.

 

[GavX]

as stated even the "best" Thermaltake watercooling is poop, everything is fairly low quality, I even have the CPU block crack and leak. Go for a nice big case like a Lian Li and later down the line add a nice Laing DDC pump, couple of decent rads and a block for the CPU and GPU (the 4870x2 fan is a noisy one I believe ) and overclock the hell out if it!

 

[diabloxx]

Right, I've decided to take your advice and not to go for the thermal take case + pre-build water cooling.

I have instead opted for a Lian Li Armorsuit PC-P80B Aluminium Super Tower Case with a Tuniq Tower 120-LFB CPU Cooler or the Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler i can't really see a difference between either though because they have both got good reviews

I should be able to get a few extra Hertz with that. Then I can add a custom solution to the watercooling (with a Laing DDC pum, thx GavX). I was thinking of mounting multiple radiators on my living room wall as a type of piece of Art, might even win the turner prize - but I don't know enough about water cooling right now.... im sure i will soon though

 

[PV5150]

Just a heads-up mate, the Foxconn BlackOps currently has issues with 2 x 2GB memory configurations.

 

[diabloxx]

doh! typical, i'm 99% complete on my perfect build and i got an issue. Thk the gods you told me though !! thx. I gues it will have to be 1x 2GB until issue is sorted, which is a bit of a bummer, unless you know of a workaround ? I dont really want to put in 4x 1GB, limits my options in a few months

 

[Mr. Smith]

The thermalright ultra extreme is THE best air cooler, get it here and here.

Whilst we are on places to buy, DO NOT use overclockers.co.uk - they are always overpriced AND have terrible customer support/RMA service... See this article for an example. Ebuyer and Scan always have competitive prices and good customer care if you want to send anything back.

Glad you changed case mate, have you thought about the silverstone tj07? Gorgeous cases, take a look at what can be done with them here they are all tj07's...

Everything else looks nice mate