Got My Super Desktop Computer This Weekend

[Mozikillah]

well, mine..

Q6600 @ 3.0 (Runs HOT with stock cooler)

DFI P35 Blood Iron

2GB (2 x 1GB) G.Skill HZ 800

XFX GF7600GT XXX (will soon be the 9800GT/GTS when it comes out after 2008)

250GB WD Hard Drive with NCQ

600W CoolerMaster ExTreme PSU

Lian Li PC-G7 case with a modded clear side panel..

[ignis]

Anyone notice this one in Thailand ?

Enermax Infiniti 720W power supply

on the 4 th floor in panthip there is a shop with a large collection of cases and power supplies , there is a range of enermax power supplies.

Thanks, will look in Pantip 2, and see if they have them there next time I pass. Pantip in BKK is to far to drive to.

[sniffdog]

EINT720AWT 720W "Infiniti" , 3 of +12V rails, Modular Cables, DXX ready 11,500 10 Years

http://busitek.com/forms/pricelist.html

[cali]

EINT720AWT 720W "Infiniti" , 3 of +12V rails, Modular Cables, DXX ready 11,500 10 Years

Modular is good for cooling by getting rid of the rats nest of unused/too long cables. I insist on modular. Multiple 12V rails is bad though. Put too much on one rail and it is overloaded. Put too little on one rail and it has trouble regulating voltage to the others due to the imbalance. And with all the energy throttling devices these days, that opens up potential for problems especially for this PSU where you have to worry about not just 2 rails, but 3. That's why high quality power supplies these days have a single 12V rail. This PSU is certainly far better than your basic generic, but it is not top tier (PCSTATS gave it a 7 out of 10). And at 11,500 baht, that's yet another part that costs double what it costs in the US (when will this end?). The other thing to remember if you are not running your PC in a cool office environment that Thailand can be hot. The hotter the air, the less efficient the PSU so you need a little bigger PSU with a little more amperage than you might normally choose.

[cclub75]

OS: Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit OEM 7,600 Baht

Amazing ! We found the first official customer of Microsoft in Thailand !

How does it feel ?

[a1ka1ine]

<3 quad core. i have to put up with my shitty x6800 dual core 3ghz extreme core2duo

[crab]

Thanks to all on this thread. It's been really helpful. Result: no Acer. I'm having a local farang computer professional build me the following:

P5K

Intel Core 2 Duo 3.2 GHz E6850

4 GB RAM

HDD1 Raptor 75 GB 10000 rpm

HDD2 Seagate 750 GB

Nvidia 8500 Gt 256MB

Samsung SyncMaster 226BW 22"

Total cost up and running in the region of 60,000 baht (with some value added extras).

Initially I'll be experimenting with Linux and XP in parallel until I feel the need or the urge to buy Vista.

If anyone has any last thoughts, there's still time for modifications.

Now, if only I could find a really good and reliable internet service!!!!!!!

Samsung SyncMaster 226BW

[dave_boo]

Thanks to all on this thread. It's been really helpful. Result: no Acer. I'm having a local farang computer professional build me the following:

P5K

Intel Core 2 Duo 3.2 GHz E6850

4 GB RAM

HDD1 Raptor 75 GB 10000 rpm

HDD2 Seagate 750 GB

Nvidia 8500 Gt 256MB

Samsung SyncMaster 226BW 22"

Total cost up and running in the region of 60,000 baht (with some value added extras).

Initially I'll be experimenting with Linux and XP in parallel until I feel the need or the urge to buy Vista.

If anyone has any last thoughts, there's still time for modifications.

Now, if only I could find a really good and reliable internet service!!!!!!!

Samsung SyncMaster 226BW

That machine should last you for quite a while. A word to the wise; don't be surprised when you boot up XP and only see ~3.5GB of RAM. It has to do with a 32 bit addressing, so unless you go with XP64, you're gonna lose that little bit. What type of back up system are you going to have? 750 GB of your music/movies/whatever gone in one fell swoop would be heart wrenching. If you could swing it, I would recommend you make sure that the motherboard you're gonna get does RAID-1 (mirror writes everything on the second drive) and get another Seagate for your peace of mind. Of course this doesn't protect your stuff if your machine is hit by a lighting bolt, but it will hedge the odds from mechanical failure.

[ignis]

Nvidia 8500 Gt 256MB ?

This is the cheapest DX10 card [it is designed for both the casual gamer and non-gamer] for just a little extra the 8600 GT or GTS is better.

GeForce 8500 GT

Processors 16

Core clock (MHz) 450

Shader clock (MHz) 900

Memory clock (MHz) x2 400

Memory DDR2

Memory bus 128-bit

Memory bandwidth (GB/sec) 12.8

Transistor count 210

HDCP compatible No

GeForce 8600 GT

Processors 32

Core clock (MHz) 540

Shader clock (MHz) 1180

Memory clock (MHz) x2 700

Memory gDDR3

Memory bus 128-bit

Memory bandwidth (GB/sec) 22.4

Transistor count 289

HDCP compatible No

GeForce 8600 GTS Stream

Processors 32

Core clock (MHz) 675

Shader clock (MHz) 1450

Memory clock (MHz) x2 1000

Memory gDDR3

Memory bus 128-bit

Memory bandwidth (GB/sec) 32

Transistor count 289

HDCP compatible Yes

Edited November 5, 2007 by ignis

[cali]

P5K

Intel Core 2 Duo 3.2 GHz E6850

4 GB RAM

HDD1 Raptor 75 GB 10000 rpm

HDD2 Seagate 750 GB

Nvidia 8500 Gt 256MB

Samsung SyncMaster 226BW 22"

The specs on that sys look pretty good. But don't expect to be playing new games with much quality using the 8500 as it's low end and you've got a high res LCD. In todays nvidia series there is only one card slower than it, the 8400. If you want a decent mid range gaming card, get the brand new 8800GT. But if you just don't do anything graphics intensive the 8500 will do nicely.

I'll say it again because I don't think people really get it; if you are dazzled by specifications, the raptor is great. But why not for a moment stop and consider the actual difference you will see; forget the tech specs, forget the synthetic benchmarks as these turn out to have little meaning. Instead take a look at these real world benchmarks 1 and 2. As you can see, the raptor just doesn't do a great deal for you performance wise versus even a single 7200 drive and is beaten by RAID0 (hey, don't shoot me I'm just the messenger). Two drives in RAID 0 saves money, gives better performance, and doesn't create an additional drive letter. And don't forget RAID0 performance applies to every single thing, not just the fraction of things you can fit on the raptor. Think of RAID0 as a dual core disk drive. But as someone mentioned failure rate and recovery could be an adantage on the raptor side.

You should strongly consider 64-bit Windows and definitely 64-bit Linux versions to get the most out of your system.

[cdnvic]

Thanks to all on this thread. It's been really helpful. Result: no Acer. I'm having a local farang computer professional build me the following:

P5K

Intel Core 2 Duo 3.2 GHz E6850

4 GB RAM

HDD1 Raptor 75 GB 10000 rpm

HDD2 Seagate 750 GB

Nvidia 8500 Gt 256MB

Samsung SyncMaster 226BW 22"

Total cost up and running in the region of 60,000 baht (with some value added extras).

Initially I'll be experimenting with Linux and XP in parallel until I feel the need or the urge to buy Vista.

If anyone has any last thoughts, there's still time for modifications.

Now, if only I could find a really good and reliable internet service!!!!!!!

Samsung SyncMaster 226BW

With XP after 1.5Gb of ram you get rapidly diminishing returns on ram investment. 1.5 to 2.0 gb I saw no real change in XP's behaviour, but a profound change in Vista with the same.

I'd invest the money from the last two GB of ram in a really powerful graphics card.

Edited November 6, 2007 by cdnvic

[dave_boo]

P5K

Intel Core 2 Duo 3.2 GHz E6850

4 GB RAM

HDD1 Raptor 75 GB 10000 rpm

HDD2 Seagate 750 GB

Nvidia 8500 Gt 256MB

Samsung SyncMaster 226BW 22"

The specs on that sys look pretty good. But don't expect to be playing new games with much quality using the 8500 as it's low end and you've got a high res LCD. In todays nvidia series there is only one card slower than it, the 8400. If you want a decent mid range gaming card, get the brand new 8800GT. But if you just don't do anything graphics intensive the 8500 will do nicely.

I'll say it again because I don't think people really get it; if you are dazzled by specifications, the raptor is great. But why not for a moment stop and consider the actual difference you will see; forget the tech specs, forget the synthetic benchmarks as these turn out to have little meaning. Instead take a look at these real world benchmarks 1 and 2. As you can see, the raptor just doesn't do a great deal for you performance wise versus even a single 7200 drive and is beaten by RAID0 (hey, don't shoot me I'm just the messenger). Two drives in RAID 0 saves money, gives better performance, and doesn't create an additional drive letter. And don't forget RAID0 performance applies to every single thing, not just the fraction of things you can fit on the raptor. Think of RAID0 as a dual core disk drive. But as someone mentioned failure rate and recovery could be an adantage on the raptor side.

You should strongly consider 64-bit Windows and definitely 64-bit Linux versions to get the most out of your system.

Ooh, I want to shoot you! Granted, perpendicular recording has brought the 7200 RPM drive almost to Raptor levels, but at what cost? Even getting an onboard controller to handle the calculations (and thereby losing processing power--not much of an issue with his setup), you're still going to be budget constrained by trying to get two drives that are going to net you Raptor performance. I noticed that AnandTech didn't mention random access/writes where the Raptor really shines. Booting off a Raptor really decreases Window's startup time.

Plus, this is really telling:

All of those results sound very impressive but in the balance of our application and game tests we only noticed a 2%~3% performance difference between RAID 0 and single drive configurations. Unless you extract files, copy or move them on the same drive, and encode all day long then the benefits of RAID 0 on the typical consumer desktop is not worth the price of admission. What is the price? In this case, $399 for a second 7K1000, a halving of the mean time between failure rates on each drive, a data backup nightmare, and increases in noise, thermals, and power consumption.

.........

.........

However, we still do not think RAID 0 is worth the trouble or cost for the average desktop user or gamer, especially with the software RAID capabilities included on most motherboards. If you must run RAID on the desktop, then we highly recommend the use of RAID 1, 5, or 10 (0+1) in order to protect your data and probably a hardware controller if you can afford one. We are going to delve into the world of RAID in the coming weeks with additional tests, system configurations, and hardware controllers. At this time we still do not recommend RAID 0 for most desktop users due to the lack of widespread performance improvements and potential data integrity concerns with it.[/quote]

That's from the last page of the article you linked to.

Edited November 6, 2007 by dave_boo

[crab]

Thanks for some excellent comments.

On the video card, there seems to be quite a price difference between the 8500 and the 8600. Given that I am NOT A GAMER, will I really get value from the extra expense?

As for the hard drives, I find this all a bit bewildering. I don't think I have a real need for RAID of any number. And I'm not sure, but suspect, that the extra 4,000 baht for the Raptor may at least diminish by a little bit my frustrations with slow reboot and slow program startup. Encyclopedia Britannica takes 2 months to open - exaggerate? me? never! - on my laptop. With the Raptor and the fast CPU, I'm hoping...

Incidentally, I propose to use my external drives for backup, and much of my data, music and video, is far from critical and comparatively easy to replace.

I take the point about XP. The thing is that, because of specific circumstances, I can go on using XP free of charge; and I am being strongly urged to experiment with Linux. Free again. But I think it as likely as not that I shall fork out the necessary 5,300 baht for Vista HP pretty soon.

I'd be interested to hear comments on Linux. Or is that a subject for another thread perhaps?

[cali]

Booting off a Raptor really decreases Window's startup time.

According to Cheap RAID Ravages Raptor you can boot in 21 seconds with Raptor or 23 with a single 7200RPM drive (not RAID).

Unless you extract files, copy or move them on the same drive, and encode all day long then the benefits of RAID 0 on the typical consumer desktop is not worth the price of admission. However, we still do not think RAID 0 is worth the trouble or cost for the average desktop user or gamer

I don't dispute these conclusions, but surely you also noticed by the same token the Raptor effect on performance is even smaller than RAID0.

You may also be interested in this just in from tomshardware review of the new Seagate 1TB drive:

The Barracuda 7200.11 offers the best low-level benchmark results, jumping over 100 MB/s read or write transfer rates and accessing data in an average of 12.7 ms. With the exception of access time and I/O benchmarks, it also clearly beats Western Digital's 10,000 RPM Raptor, and sets the new standard for desktop hard drives. (It's about time for Western Digital to come up with a new Raptor drive. Based on current technology, it should be able to regain everything that has been lost to Seagate right now.)