System build help - $1,000

[magillagorilla]

Hey all,
I'm fishing for opinions on a system build. I am no longer happy with the speed in which my Core2 Quad machine is rendering video and I want to build a new Core i7 box. I have some general ideas but they mostly come from gamers and sites like Tom's Hardware (heavily tilted towards gamers). I don't play PC games, I am mostly in to multi-media, video, audio rendering and playback. I hear the new Core i7 2600K processors have some built in features for incodeing.

Constraints:
Budget is $1,000
Already have a Caprure card
I already have plenty of HDDs so they are excluded from the build (I have 4x1TB SATA 3Gbps drives).
I'm considering an SSD for my OS drive
I don't need a fancy $300 video card
I need a full ATX board, I like to keep my options open on expansion slots
Considering a BD burner

Any opinions........... Mainboards to get or aviod, ammount and type of RAM, video cards more suited for multimedia......


Thanks!

[jman98]

Please note that my recent build is AMD, but my advice may still be useful to you.

I bought Asus as my motherboard and went through 2 defective ones. Couldn't get them to POST. I did some research after I started having problems and I've got real concerns about Asus with regards to quality. I ended up getting a Gigabyte motherboard and it's all been good. You should probably look for a motherboard that has a video chip on it as like me you have no need for a separate graphics card. USB 3.0 support might be nice. I got it.

I am using a 256 GB SSD from Crucial and I love it! It is awesome. I really could not be happier with it. SSD is great technology. However do note that you definitely want to run an OS that supports TRIM. Windows 7 does. Linux does. Not sure about anything else. Your needs are like mine by the way. I use my PC exactly as you do and care nothing about games.

I bought an LG and a Pioneer BD burner. Both are fine.

Be careful with SATA 3. You need good quality cables to attach devices to the motherboard. I had some disk drive stability issues with two 2 TB SATA 3 drives and they went away when I bought some nice right angled SATA 3 cables at Fry's. I was previously using cables that were straight connectors on both sides.

[jman98]

Actually you may need a separate graphics card upon reflection since you do rendering, so you may want to get a motherboard that does not have a video chip if you need this.

One final thought - I am using Corsair 1333 MHz memory and I've had no problems with it.

[magillagorilla]

Thanks jman98. Interesting opinion on the Asus boards cuz I was looking at one. I'm a Wintel guy. I tried AMD twice and was underimpressed. Recent benchmarks show that the i7 outpaces the Phenom x6 buy a good ammount in the area of transcodeing. And I'll need a video card because I'm driving 3 displays. I have one main 24in 1080x1920 LCD monitor, a 19in 1024x768 LCD I like to use to keep tools and other stuff off my "work screen", and finally a Samsung 31in 1080i HD CRT I run a HDMI cable to to watch movies and stuff. I have a little GeFource 210 card that does all this OK but it will not drive all 3 monitors at the same time. I think I can get a video card to suit my needs for $100.

I was thinking I would allocate most of my money on processor/MB/RAM/SSD and BD burners arent all that cheap either.

[lordsmurf]

You can buy all-new hardware ...
... only to learn it doesn't help speed because of the software.

Been there, done that, have a closet full of T-shirts.

Watch for that.

[magillagorilla]

LS, that is very solid advise. Here's the other part of the deal. My wife needs a new(r) computer. She uses the internet and office, which a Core2 Quad can handle. So I figure, I'll build myself a new machine and give her my old one. It's a win-win situation.



.......... and also don't forget, even if it doesn't help speed, new computers are shiny



Also, also.......... I'm a computer systems developer by trade so I understand the basics on a PC build. I hoped to get some introspect on hardware selections from video enthusiasts.

[usually_quiet]

I don't know anything about them from personal experience, but here are some items to investigate.

Blu-ray burner:
http://www.directron.com/bdr206.html

locked i7 SB CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115071

unlocked i7 SB CPU if you want to overclock
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115070

Some SB motherboards with P67, which requires a VGA card to be installed
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128476

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130572

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130574

Most VGA cards with 3 or 4 ports still can't run 3 monitors at the same time. If you want Nvidia, you will need two video cards in SLI mode to run 3 monitors at the same time. However, cards with ATI's Eyefinity feature can, using an extended desktop, but a displayport connection must be used to run one of them.

This one near your stated budget for a VGA card.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=14-161-334&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&P...scrollFullInfo
You may also need one of these single-link displayport to DVI adapters to run 3 monitors, but the maximum resolution it supports is 1920x1200: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814999030&Tpk=14-999 A USB-powered active dual-link adapter can offers greater functionality but costs more.

One reviewer at newegg wrote the following about this card:

An individual card won't support 3 digital displays at once without a Native Display Port Monitor or an Active Display Port Adaptor ($80-$150). Which means you can't use all 3 monitors or the EYEFINITY option without one of those two setups.

I blame this flaw on ATI for not properly designing the cards, and not informing people properly. Not HIS's fault, and it doesn't change the fact that the card performs flawlessly.

Other Thoughts: Setup for 3 Single Displays or (3) Monitor EYEFINITY:

1 - HDMI
1 - DVI (can use either VGA or HDMI adaptor)
1 - Display Port (Native Display Port Monitor)

- OR -

1 - HDMI
1 - DVI (can use either VGA or HDMI adaptor)
1 - Display Port -> DVI (Active Display Port Adaptor)

[deadrats]

i wouldn't spend anywhere near a grand for a new build, especially when hard drives aren't in the equation. i consider ssd's a waste of dough at the moment, especially when you consider the price/capacity ratio.

if you want to go intel, then your only choices are something in the sandy bridge family, though i would seriously consider waiting for the ivy bridge refresh.

on the amd side, bulldozer is set to be released sometime in the june/july time frame, and they should offer comparable performance with sandy bridge, at least that's how amd's slides show them as being positioned, should also be significantly cheaper.

now for the white elephant in the room, sandy bridge's encoding features: basically sandy bridge processors have hardware that allows them to accelerate the intel media sdk; said sdk allows for hardware decode of vc-1, mpeg-2 and h264 as well as hardware encode of mpeg-2 and h264. it also allows features resizing, sharpening, various motion estimation techniques, color correction, frame rate changing, but to date there is no software that fully implements all of the features that the sdk is capable of and in order to fully take advantage of hardware acceleration of said features you need to use the integrated gpu because motion estimation is handled by the gpu's execution unit array.

[RabidDog]

2nd what deadrats last paragraph says (tho why its a "white" elepant? more green n red, 4 N & A).

Maybe wait for Bulldozer and Ivy bridge.
Mobo? like Asus, Asrock ....gigabyte,Nvidia not so much
SSD .. many swear by them
RAID0 .. yes
BDburner .. why not? now not a lot of price difference between readers & writers
8gb of ram, 64 bit W7
USB3, SATA3 a must

[deadrats]

the difference between a bd-rom (reader) and a bd-r (writer) is significant, a bd-rom can be had for $90, the cheapest bd-r i have seen was over $300.

raid-0: i would stay away from it, unless the OP is working with uncompressed sources and doing some serious video editing you're not going to bottleneck from drive speed, add in the fact that if one hdd fails all the data on the raid is lost and you have a recipe for a mess.

if he absolutely wants a raid, i would go with some redundancy, raid 10, raid 1+0, raid 0+1, raid 5, but in all honesty on a desktop pc raid is really for posers that like to say "i have a raid array" on tech forums.

[ricoman]

the difference between a bd-rom (reader) and a bd-r (writer) is significant, a bd-rom can be had for $90, the cheapest bd-r i have seen was over $300.

No, no, no... BD burners are way down now, there are some very nice burners for < $125 like the Pioneer 206 here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Descr...rner&x=10&y=26

[RabidDog]

I DO have a raid array /;-}

[DarrellS]

I'd wait and see what the Bulldozer and Ivy offer also. The motherboards are very lacking for the Sandybridge. The AMD boards offer a little more but not much. They took the IDE/PATA and FDD connectors off the board but added nothing to replace them so instead of having two IDE burners and 8 HDDs you get 6 (or 8 at the most) SATA connectors for two optical drives and 4 HDDs and end up paying twice as much for the board than what you would've paid for a lot better board 6 months ago.

Hopefully the motherboard offerings will be better with the next releases but somehow I don't think they will in this era of stick it to the consumer while he's down.

[usually_quiet]

I'd wait and see what the Bulldozer and Ivy offer also. The motherboards are very lacking for the Sandybridge. The AMD boards offer a little more but not much. They took the IDE/PATA and FDD connectors off the board but added nothing to replace them so instead of having two IDE burners and 8 HDDs you get 6 (or 8 at the most) SATA connectors for two optical drives and 4 HDDs and end up paying twice as much for the board than what you would've paid for a lot better board 6 months ago.

Hopefully the motherboard offerings will be better with the next releases but somehow I don't think they will in this era of stick it to the consumer while he's down.

I think the fat lady is almost finshed with her aria, and it is time to resign ourselves to legacy headers being absent on most new motherboards.

For every one of us old-timers who writes a review saying that he/she uses floppy, IDE, serial port, and parallel port headers, there are two youngsters who write one saying including them added unnecessarily to their motherboard's cost and wasted motherboard real estate.

Based on personal experience I suppose they have a point. I did install a floppy drive on the PC I built two years ago, but only use it once in a blue moon. Initially I used IDE HDDs, and I added a serial port using a header for a device that was semi-functional under Vista. However, at this point, I can't use the serial port device anymore, since there are no Windows 7 drivers for it, and I have replaced my IDE drives with larger capacity SATA drives. (The IDE drives are stashed in the closet in case of emergency.)

[DarrellS]

I don't care that they've removed IDE and FDD, I just wish they would replace it with something. You have to search real hard to find a floppy drive anyway and they stopped selling floppy discs in stores over a year ago. I've only got a couple of IDE drives left and they're in my other PC but all my optical drives are IDE because I need all the SATA connectors I can get.

The problem is, everyone is making motherboards and CPUs for the future but the future is not here. Where is all the USB 3.0 hardware? There are tons of USB connectors on new motherboards. Why don't they sell internal USB optical drives to connect to the extra USB connectors on the new motherboards. They don't need to waste SATA connectors on DVD burners but if that's what they're going to do then add two more SATA connectors to replace the two IDE burners.

My brother bought a new board and CPU for christmas and it was obsolete a month later. The CPU is an I5 760 which had only been out 6 months when he bought it. Newegg still carries the CPU but they don't sell the board anymore because they want everyone to buy the new 1155 boards with the Sandy Bridge instead of the 1156 boards which offered way more than the 1155 boards. You can still get a POS 1156 board but not any of the good ones. They pulled them off the market. My brother's motherboard has 8 SATA connectors on the board, 14 USB connectors and and IDE connector for 2 optical drives. If something goes wrong with that board then he is SOL because he can't replace it.

Everyone buying the new 1155 boards and the Sandy Bridge will probably be in the same boat when the Ivy Bridge comes out at the end of the year. You can still find 775 stuff but the new trend is to make everything obsolete every six months or so. Let's con everyone into buying a new PC and operating system every year or so.

[usually_quiet]

I don't care that they've removed IDE and FDD, I just wish they would replace it with something. You have to search real hard to find a floppy drive anyway and they stopped selling floppy discs in stores over a year ago. I've only got a couple of IDE drives left and they're in my other PC but all my optical drives are IDE because I need all the SATA connectors I can get.

The problem is, everyone is making motherboards and CPUs for the future but the future is not here. Where is all the USB 3.0 hardware? There are tons of USB connectors on new motherboards. Why don't they sell internal USB optical drives to connect to the extra USB connectors on the new motherboards. They don't need to waste SATA connectors on DVD burners but if that's what they're going to do then add two more SATA connectors to replace the two IDE burners.

My brother bought a new board and CPU for christmas and it was obsolete a month later. The CPU is an I5 760 which had only been out 6 months when he bought it. Newegg still carries the CPU but they don't sell the board anymore because they want everyone to buy the new 1155 boards with the Sandy Bridge instead of the 1156 boards which offered way more than the 1155 boards. You can still get a POS 1156 board but not any of the good ones. They pulled them off the market. My brother's motherboard has 8 SATA connectors on the board, 14 USB connectors and and IDE connector for 2 optical drives. If something goes wrong with that board then he is SOL because he can't replace it.

Everyone buying the new 1155 boards and the Sandy Bridge will probably be in the same boat when the Ivy Bridge comes out at the end of the year. You can still find 775 stuff but the new trend is to make everything obsolete every six months or so. Let's con everyone into buying a new PC and operating system every year or so.

The demand for IDE drives and IDE connections on new computers is very low anymore. The average PC builder today won't miss IDE. Most people building a new PC only use 3 or 4 of the SATA connections on their motherboard and have some to spare. Your situation of needing all the SATA connections for HDDs is somewhat unusual, as was mine where I needed to re-use old hard drives to get a better motherboard and CPU and still stay within a small budget. SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0 connections use a lot more bandwidth than the older connections, so engineering considerations as well as cost savings are probably playing a role in the decision not to replace IDE headers with 2 more SATA connections.

On the other hand, the demand for the newer connections is growing. A majority of those who build a custom PC do want the latest technology now. A small percentage does upgrade frequently to have the latest and greatest technology most of the time. As for the rest, even if they don't have ability to make full use of it when they purchase the motherboard, they expect to within a couple of years after the prices for things that require it go down.

I took a look at Newegg. Devices that use the new connections are starting to appear, although they are still very expensive compared to their conventional counterparts. There are more and more SATA 6Gb/s solid state drives. There were very large external hard drives and drive towers for RAID arrays that use USB 3.0. I also saw an external USB 3.0 BD burner. The Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle is another device that uses USB 3.0.

Not having enough money to keep up with Intel is the reason why I went with AMD for my current PC. Backward compatibility seemed a little better with their stuff. As far as MS operating systems, I think the 5-year gap between Windows XP and Vista was an anomaly. For most of the past 20 years, a new Microsoft OS for desktops came out every 2 to 3 years.

[Noahtuck]

the difference between a bd-rom (reader) and a bd-r (writer) is significant, a bd-rom can be had for $90, the cheapest bd-r i have seen was over $300.

No, no, no... BD burners are way down now, there are some very nice burners for < $125 like the Pioneer 206 here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Descr...rner&x=10&y=26

Yeah i was wondering when he wrote that, where the hell does he price bluray burners ?!?!?
LOL!!
The price between a BD-ROM and a BD Burner is so negligible now it's not worth saving $20-$30 to buy just a reader.

And as jman98 stated, i would also buy a Gigabyte over an Asus mobo any day of the week.

[budz]

the difference between a bd-rom (reader) and a bd-r (writer) is significant, a bd-rom can be had for $90, the cheapest bd-r i have seen was over $300.

No, no, no... BD burners are way down now, there are some very nice burners for < $125 like the Pioneer 206 here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Descr...rner&x=10&y=26

Yeah i was wondering when he wrote that, where the hell does he price bluray burners ?!?!?
LOL!!
The price between a BD-ROM and a BD Burner is so negligible now it's not worth saving $20-$30 to buy just a reader.

And as jman98 stated, i would also buy a Gigabyte over an Asus mobo any day of the week.

Ditto to getting a GIGABYTE mobo over ASUS......prices of BD burners is cheap these days might as well get that over a BD-ROM......

[DarrellS]

If I was building a new machine, I'd probably go with a socket 1366 I7 because of the motherboard selection.

Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor BX80601950 - $269.99 ($249.99 at Fry's)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115211&Tpk=i7%20950%20intel%20processor

GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard - $189.99 after $10 rebate

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128423

Triple channel memory, 8 SATA 3.0, 2 SATA 6.0, 2 e-SATA, 2 rear Firewire 1 onboard i394a, 8 USB 2.0, 2 USB 3.0, 4 PCIe x16, 2 PCIe x1 and 1 PCI slot. Oh, and 1 IDE connector supporting 2 optical drives and one FDD connector.

I have a Corsair PSU but I like my brother's Thermaltake because of the wire management feature.

Thermaltake TR-700P TR2 BRONZE 700W ATX 12V V2.3 / EPS 12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply - $104.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153129

COOLER MASTER RC-692-KKN2 CM690 II Advanced Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - $89.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119216

CORSAIR CWCH50-1 High Performance CPU Cooler - $71.36

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181010

.

Or a six core AMD. I've never owned an AMD but there seems to be a lot of bang for the buck.

[TBoneit]

Strangely enough I just did a system to upgrade my brothers old P4 system. 160Gb Intel SSD
I7 2600
1Tb SATA
DVDRW SATA
4Gb DDR3
Card reader
Case
ASUS MicroATX mobo w/USB3
Nvidia 8400GS video Under a grand cost
Win7 Pro

Add a USB Floppy $10 or $15
$15 for a dual IDE Silicon Image PCI card so I can transfer his data over
Still under a grand cost WEI for the hard drive is 7.3 Weakest link is the video card, he doesn't need fancy however.

The system boots up in well under a minute to the desktop with the A/V loaded.

I just converted my home system to a intel 300Gb SSD, converted to controller settings to AHCI after running the MS fixit tool WEI for the hard drive is showing 7.5, That system boots real fast too, now. Both systems just click on the browser, IE or FF4 amd they pop onto the screen.

I did my older, late 2009, cheapo laptop that I use for financial work only, to Intel 160Gb SSD and despite it being a cheap $329 new laptop the start up time on it is much better and the programs pop up on the screen now. Much improved performance and to me, worth it.

There goes the income tax refund BTW.

On the latest build with win7 Pro Burner s/w etc once it POSTS it takes about 20 seconds counting by the Thousand One, Thousand two etc method. That is after the POST finishes. Oh yeah, 125Gig free out of the boot drive Bottom line after seeing the improvement on the laptop I went to SSD for everything.

Watching things pop onto the screen so much faster really does improve the windows experience.

Something to think about.

Cheers