Possible new Computer Combination

[seeseeme]

Hi everyone,

After reading many things about the various parts for a new computer I have so far come up with this combination.

As I know very little about the internal workings of a computer any thoughts on this would be much appreciated.

First on the CPU, I have picked the Core i5 one as the Core i7 one is for more serious gamers then me and the other Dual Core processes seem to be on the way out over the next few years. Hopefully this one will get me through the next 5-6 years as my current one has.

CPU

Intel BX80605I5750 CORE i5 750/ 2.66GHz/ 8MB CACHE/ LGA1156

Motherboard- I am not to sure of which one, I have read about them and they both have some really good points.

Gigabyte GA-P55-UD6 P55, 6DDR3, 24VRM, PCIEx16, 3x1394a, 2GbLAN, SLI, DES2, 12SATA

OR

Asus P7P55D-DELUXE P55, 4DDR3, FSB2133 (OC), RAID, 2GBLAN, 3xPCIEx16, 9SATA, 10-CH

RAM- there is at the moment a few RAM’s available for the Core i5 processors so there is not much choice, the other brand in the Kingston.

Corsair CMX4GX3M2A1600C8 4GB (2x XMS3 2GB) PC-12800 (1600MHz) XMS KIT, DDR3 For MB i7 / i5 Core dual channel DDR3 processors

Video/Graphics Card

Gigabyte Geforce GTX 275 PCI-E 2.0 896MB DDR3 512-bit, 633/ 2268MHz, Dual Dual-Link DVI, HDMI

Hard Drive- not to sure about the brands for this. The size though is the main thing for me to think of. Currently my main hard drive is 320GB and that is only 65% full. Something like my 2009 Archive Files are on another drive and even if I had them on my Drive C, I would still be about 55% full. So a 500GB should be plenty, I can not see myself all of a sudden finding new interest is the Internet world or in games. The external drive for backing up my content will cover anything/everything I need. At present I have 3 Drives of different size and anything on them that needs backing up would fit onto any 500GB External Drive without any problems.

-Seagate ST3500320NS 3.5” CUDA ES7200.2 500GB 7200RPM 32MB SATA2 3Gb/ s NCQ 5 YR
And an External Drive

Seagate ST305004EXM101-RK EXTERNAL DESKTOP, 3.5”, 500GB, 7200RPM, USB2.0

Another Choice/Combination may be;

Western Digital WD6401AALS CAVIAR BLACK/ 640GB/ 7200RPM/ SATA 3GB/ s/ 32MB CACHE/ 3.5”

And an External Drive

Western Digital WDE1UBK6400A WD ELEMENTS DESKTOP 3.5” EXTERNAL 640GB USB2.0

CD/DVD Drive- I have no idea about this, so I just picked one out of the air LOL. All I need is one to read CDs and DVD disks plus copying to. This one was mentioned in the last PC User magazine.

LG GH22NS50 22xDVD+-R, 12xDVD-RAM, DL, BLK, SATA, NERO EXPRESS7, REP GH22NS30

Tower Case and Power Supply- Now the Case I have had a read of and from what I have seen the Antec cases are quite good. The Nine Hundred Two has a number of fans and as I can fit another one on the Side that would also help in the cooling process. The power supply though I am not sure of. I have read a number of reports both good and bad about a number of Power Supply units and have just used the Antec one as it’s also their Case LOL

Antec Nine Hundred Two Tower Gaming Case w/ Side Window Black, NO PSU, 9 Drive Bays

Plus additional fan in the side

750W “Antec” TruePower ATX Power Supply, 120mm fan, DUAL PCI-E Graphics Card Connector

The one last thing is software, Window 7 Professional of course LOL, this version has better XP support. Without knowing exactly why a 32 bit version should be suitable. Again this is a thought following reading magazines and the forum.

Thanks for reading and I hope I have not forgotten any parts :hehe: .

Craig

 

[Tanvaras]

Sent you an email regarding your mentioned system Craig.


Cheers

Trent

 

[Johnk]

It'll be superseded within a week. Why bother?

 

[johnwhelan]

Looks reasonable, I'd probably go ASUS rather than Gigabyte. Have you thought about a solid state hard drive for performance?

I tend to partition the hard drive about 50/60 gigs for the operating system that way if you need to reformat and reload you don't lose quite so much data, programs get installed on a different partition.

We managed to reduce software errors by 90% by putting on a UPS, its the brown outs or low voltage that seem to cause the problems although Antec power supplies are very good.

Video card well http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2464-4.html the latest ones are 400 nm rather than 55 nm and Toms favours ATI on price performance this week but on the other hand Auran gets programming support form nVidia so favour nVidia cards.

Cheerio John

 

[whitepass]

Window 7 Professional of course LOL, this version has better XP support.

The XP support is not for games, only old office type programs, just get 64 bit home. I just lost an Ausa MB after 13 mouths.

 

[seeseeme]

Thanks everyone for the replies.

John, I have been reading articles on Toms Hardware for a couple of months since reading some of your replies. Took a little time to get used to their set site and locating stuff. I have actually read that article you pointed me too.

I have also read about the solid state hard drives as well, but some of that I am not to sure of, my knowledge in this area of computers is limited. That is why I started this thread and some others. My current 6 year old computer was built using information from this forum and peoples great advice.

Many thanks though for the thought, its much appreciated.

The XP support is not for games, only old office type programs, just get 64 bit home. I just lost an Ausa MB after 13 mouths.

I was not sure about the XP Support, I knew it would help with old Office programs support but did not know about TRS. I do not know much about the differences between 32 and 64 bit either.

Many thanks again, I will be doing some more reading before taking the next step.

Craig

 

[johnwhelan]

Thanks everyone for the replies.

John, I have been reading articles on Toms Hardware for a couple of months since reading some of your replies. Took a little time to get used to their set site and locating stuff. I have actually read that article you pointed me too.

I have also read about the solid state hard drives as well, but some of that I am not to sure of, my knowledge in this area of computers is limited. That is why I started this thread and some others. My current 6 year old computer was built using information from this forum and peoples great advice.

Many thanks though for the thought, its much appreciated.


I was not sure about the XP Support, I knew it would help with old Office programs support but did not know about TRS. I do not know much about the differences between 32 and 64 bit either.

Many thanks again, I will be doing some more reading before taking the next step.

Craig

Basic simplified computer stuff, computer parts such as the cpu and gpu are basically made by a photocopy technique. So the thing that costs is the size of silicon that is beamed on and creating the mask in the first place. So you get more 40 nm parts off the same bit of silicon than you do if its 55nm, so it costs less to create them. The other interesting thing is that the electrons now have a shorter distance to travel so you can shorten the window when you say right all you electrons rush now, this means faster performance and lower heat. The downside is creating the mask is more expensive for the 40 than the 55 nm part.

You measure disk access in milliseconds, memory in nano seconds 10,000 nanoseconds equal one millisecond, so most of the time you are waiting for the disk drives. On average 95%+ you are reading from the hard drive so waiting for the head to get to the track is a problem.

Random Read Latency in ms

Intel X25-M 0.11 ms
Western Digital VelociRaptor 6.83 ms

and remember that the Raptor is one of the fastest drives available today. This is a huge performance difference but the drives are expensive so stick the operating system on it.

This anandtech write up is a little old but covers why you'd want one.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=1

Win 7 helps with this sort of drive.

32 bit / 64 bit. All computer instructions basically say load this memory cell do something and put the result in that memory cell.

The memory cells are referenced by number but there is a limit to the size of the number. 32 bits can have 4 gigs of different cell addresses. Unfortunately the pc has hardwired addresses for the video card etc which reduces this number to 3.5 gigs of available memory cell addresses. The operating system protects the system by limiting programs to 31 bits for memory addresses the famous 2 gig limit.

There is a way that a 64 bit operating system can allow 32 bit programs to access 4 gigs of memory but the program has to know how to access the extra memory. Currently Trainz does not know how to do this.

Now the trade off begins, if you use a 64 bit system then program instructions have to be bigger to carry the 64 bit addresses. So its more to pull in from the disk drive, they take longer to load etc. There is some slight differences, 64 bit operating systems are more secure, then can handle memory better, and to be honest the modern cpus etc have so much power floating around you won't notice that much performance difference.

If you can access more main memory with a 64 bit program then you need less hard disk accesses, remember those things that took 10,000 times longer than memory? And that basically is where the performance increases come from.

So from a strict performance point of view running 32 bit Trainz a 32 bit operating system works well but when you start to push the memory limits then a 64 bit operating system helpsabnd based on WindWalkr's latest comments on TS2010

"You may want to have a think about your position on these Operating Systems. As with any product, MS's new releases have their upsides and downsides, but the whole "Windows Vista is rubbish" mentality is very similar to the "I'm sticking with TRS2004" mentality - if the old product still works for you then great, but you're throwing away the chance to access a lot of new features by ignoring the upgrade.

I'm no Microsoft fan, but I have to admit that (despite the initial teething problems with Vista) they've come a long way since XP. For old hardware, you should probably stick with XP - but when it comes time to upgrade, you'll find 7 a huge step forward. And you definitely should be looking at a 64-bit OS.

my 2c,

chris."

So 64 bit Win 7 is the way to go.

Cheerio John

 

[seeseeme]

Many thanks John,

I did actually understand some of that :hehe: and I can see what is meant by the difference.

The reports on Windows 7 have been quite favorable compared to what I have read about Vista (never used/or seen that working). The various charts, comparisons and experiences from different sources does put it above Vista. One comment was along the lines that Windows 7 is what Vista should have been.

Now with your comments I can see the differences in "bits" and that has helped, many thanks.

Craig

 

[johnwhelan]

Windwalkr made an interesting post yesterday about TS2009 and TS2010. They can access upto 4 gigs of memory under a 64 bit operating system so summed up basically go 64 bit operating system and 6 gigs of memory.

Cheerio John

 

[seeseeme]

Many thanks for that John, I will keep that in mind.

Craig

 

[big_b]

Take a look at a NZXT Tempest case.I've just recently rebuilt my PC & used this one over my Antec p180 case.It's already go plenty of cooling as standard & a bit deeper for longer graphics cards.

http://www.nzxt.com/products/tempest/

Dave

 

[seeseeme]

Many Thanks for that. It does have a lot of cooling, a bit more then the Nine Hundred Two case. With the Antec one you can fit more fans to it if you wish.

Craig