Official "System Builders" Thread

[Bluesrock]

Hi guys

I'm back again for your wisdom. The rig you guys suggested for me is still running beautifully and now my friend is building 2 pc's. The rigs will be used for gaming and a bit of photoshop on the second. Any money that can be saved would be great.

PC1

MSI Z77A-G43[Link] - R1,492
Intel Core i5-2500K[Link] - R2,049
Kingston ValueRam 4GB x2[Link] - R444
MSI R7850 Twin Frozr OC HD7850 2GB[Link] - R2,798
Corsair CX600[Link]- R817
Using old HDD's
(Assume I will do Crossfire on this PC in future)

Total - R7,600

PC2
GIGABYTE Z68XP-UD3[Link] - R1,556
Intel Core i5-2500K[Link] - R2,049
Kingston ValueRam 4GB x2[Link] - R444
GTX560Ti OC 1GB [Link] - Bought already(+/-R2500)
Corsair CX600[Link]- R817
Seagate 1TB[Link] - R1,024 (might change this to a TB Caviar Green + 60GB SSD not quite sure)
Antec Lifestyle Series Sonata Proto, Black Chassis[Link] - R702
DVD Writer [Link] - R201

Total = R9,293

Any advice or crit will be appreciated
edit: he's building both not either

[Wesley]

Hi guys

I'm back again for your wisdom. The rig you guys suggested for me is still running beautifully and now my friend is building 2 pc's. The rigs will be used for gaming and a bit of photoshop on the second. Any money that can be saved would be great.

Any advice or crit will be appreciated
edit: he's building both not either

Actually, that's really not bad at all. I'd only really recommend two things for consideration:

ANTEC HCG-Modular 520w @ R838 (modular is always a good thing, especially if you want a clean setup inside)
Corsair Carbide Series 400R @ R817 (its the better choice cooling-wise)

If your friend prefers the Sonata, though, its not a bad buy at all. Tell him he should also change his hard drive brand preference to Western Digital - they've still got the three-year warranty as standard.

Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB @ R1040
Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB @ R1161

And since he might choose a SSD to go with everything, I suggest he look at this one:

OCZ Agility 3 60GB @ R905

[Bluesrock]

Thanks for the advice Wesley.

He took your suggestion on the hard drives, but was sold on a coolermaster psu in the end though.

[Wesley]

Thanks for the advice Wesley.

He took your suggestion on the hard drives, but was sold on a coolermaster psu in the end though.

One convert at a time... ;-) Western Digital is more solid now than they were three years ago, and people would be well off to give them a chance again, especially since Seagate decided to screw all customers who use their drives for drive-intensive tasks on a daily basis. At this point, only WD and Seagate's Spinpoint drives are worth their asking price. And of course there's also SSDs, but they're too far removed from the mainstream to be a better idea right now.

[Elyaradine]

Hiya! :) My current rig's about 4 years old. Three hard drives died in The Great Eskom+Gremlin fail of '12, and I figure while I'm replacing hard drives, I might as well go ahead and replace everything else. :P

By far my main use is making games/game art. I'd like to be able to keep my rendering/baking times down, have enough RAM to be running all the things I use on a daily basis (Unity, my 2D and 3D content-creation apps, music, browser and occasionally some compositing stuff). Also, some of the apps I use claim to be faster on CUDA. I haven't used them without it, so I don't know how much of a difference that'd make, but the point is that while I do get to play games sometimes, it's more important that my work stuff performs great than for me to be able to squeeze some extra performance out of a game.

I've got about a R10k budget in mind, but I don't mind spending a bit more if it's worth it. I'm good with using my current mouse, keyboard, monitors and stuff. Thanks!

[Wesley]

Hiya! :) My current rig's about 4 years old. Three hard drives died in The Great Eskom+Gremlin fail of '12, and I figure while I'm replacing hard drives, I might as well go ahead and replace everything else. :P

By far my main use is making games/game art. I'd like to be able to keep my rendering/baking times down, have enough RAM to be running all the things I use on a daily basis (Unity, my 2D and 3D content-creation apps, music, browser and occasionally some compositing stuff). Also, some of the apps I use claim to be faster on CUDA. I haven't used them without it, so I don't know how much of a difference that'd make, but the point is that while I do get to play games sometimes, it's more important that my work stuff performs great than for me to be able to squeeze some extra performance out of a game.

I've got about a R10k budget in mind, but I don't mind spending a bit more if it's worth it. I'm good with using my current mouse, keyboard, monitors and stuff. Thanks!

Great! Gives me room to move here :-) I'm doing the System Builders R8k and R10k rigs on Tuesday, but I can help you out here.

Intel Core i5-2500K @ R2086
MSI Z77A-G43 @ R1432
Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1600 4GB x4 @ R1004
GIGABYTE GV-N56GOC GTX560 1GB DDR5 @ R1838
Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB x2 @ R2322
LITE-ON iHAS524 @ R167
Antec VP550P @ R597
Corsair Carbide 400R @ R817

Total: R10263

This is a system more optimised towards productivity than gaming. You'll want to RAID the two 2TB drives in a mirror configuration for the best redundancy. The bigger chassis allows you to fit in extra fans and tidy everything nicely inside to keep it cool. You've got 16GB of RAM at your disposal, a highly overclockable processor and a capable power supply.

It'll play games nicely, too. You'll also need to specify if you're into sound editing as well, because then we'll need to get a decent sound card too.

[Elyaradine]

Thanks, Wesley! Looks great! :D

Apparently the motherboard's sold out at Rebeltech. I'll check elsewhere. :)

[Chevron]

Hiya! :) My current rig's about 4 years old. Three hard drives died in The Great Eskom+Gremlin fail of '12, and I figure while I'm replacing hard drives, I might as well go ahead and replace everything else. :P

By far my main use is making games/game art. I'd like to be able to keep my rendering/baking times down, have enough RAM to be running all the things I use on a daily basis (Unity, my 2D and 3D content-creation apps, music, browser and occasionally some compositing stuff). Also, some of the apps I use claim to be faster on CUDA. I haven't used them without it, so I don't know how much of a difference that'd make, but the point is that while I do get to play games sometimes, it's more important that my work stuff performs great than for me to be able to squeeze some extra performance out of a game.

I've got about a R10k budget in mind, but I don't mind spending a bit more if it's worth it. I'm good with using my current mouse, keyboard, monitors and stuff. Thanks!

Since you have a focus on content creation, the more cores the better.

AMD CPU Desktop FX-Series X8 8150 R3100

MSI 970A-G46 AM3+ Dual-Channel R996

Corsair CMZ4GX3M2A2000C10 Vengeance 2x2GB DDR3-2000 1.5v CL10 Desktop R588 x2

Inno3D NVIDIA GeForce GTX560 Ti 1GB GDDR5 256-bit PCI-E x16 R2153

OCZ VTX3-25SAT3-120G Vertex 3 2.5" 120GB SATA3 SSD R1835

Sony AD-7260S DVD Writer 24X SATA Dual Layer - OEM R168

Cooler Master GX550W PSU ATX 12V V2.31 Active PFC R708

Coolermaster USP 100 (RC-P100) Black Chassis (Red Mesh) - No PSU R579

Total: R10715

It's really a bad idea buying mechanical hard drives now as pricing still hasn't returned to pre-flood levels. Should be there by June though.

As you can see this build also includes a 560Ti and I chose 2000mhz RAM as the CPU can support RAM to 1866mhz.

I'd recommend this build for your uses.

[McDangerous]

My recommendation is between Chev's and Wesley's.

I'd much rather slot a 2600K into your rig for the same price as the FX-8150. It's been proven that AMD's modules don't equal the HT quads Intel has to offer. I'd basically get:

i7 2600K - R2 994

ASRock Z68 - R1 238

16GB ADATA 1600 CL9 - R972

Cooler Master Elite 311 - R302

Cooler Master GX 550W - R679

WD Caviar Blue 500GB - R804

Sony DVD Writer - R147

Cooler Master PWM 612 CPU Cooler - R478

Club3D GTX 560 Ti - R2 426

Grand Total = R 10 032

With this build, you've got a full 16GB of ram, a GTX 560 Ti, and an i7 2600K, which you can easily overclock to at least 4.3GHz using the included CPU cooler, while staying quieter than the stock cooler. At that speed, this rig will munch the rigs Wes and Chev suggested in any application you throw at it. I've seen with SolidWorks rendering first hand that the amount of RAM you have outweighs its speed, and a HT quad will literally half your rendering time. I guarantee you that you won't notice the difference in speed going from 1600 CL9 to 2000 CL9, but you'll notice a difference going from 4GB to 16GB, especially if you're rendering/creating and running other apps simultaneously. Granted, I've only included a 500GB drive, but if you have any sense at all, you'll just wait a month or two when HDD prices have returned to normal before purchasing. You'll save at least R1500 going for a 4TB setup then. While i'd like to include an SSD, you need the capacity at the moment more than you need the speed.

And don't give me no bull**** about you don't want to overclock, that's horse **** with a Sandy Bridge setup. You literally only have to step up the multiplier in the BIOS and push up the voltage until you reach your chip's limit with the provided cooling. It really is so easy, nothing could go wrong.

[Wesley]

Thanks, Wesley! Looks great! :D

Apparently the motherboard's sold out at Rebeltech. I'll check elsewhere. :)

Any Z77 board will do, and if you wait a bit I'm sure other brands are going to start landing here soon as well.

It's really a bad idea buying mechanical hard drives now as pricing still hasn't returned to pre-flood levels. Should be there by June though.

As you can see this build also includes a 560Ti and I chose 2000mhz RAM as the CPU can support RAM to 1866mhz.

I'd recommend this build for your uses.

Also a good option, but why only an SSD? If his content creation maxes out his space, where's he going to go from there? I think a RAID'd setup would give him similar benefits anyway and extra redundancy. Even though SSDs can fail into read-only mode, I don't see him buying another one to replace that seeing as they're going to stay high-priced for now.

Tweaking Chev's suggestion (if I may, Mr. Gordon):

AMD FX-8120 @ R2036
MSI 970A-G46 @ R894
Kingston Hyper-X Blu DDR3-1866 4GB x2 @ R730
GIGABYTE GV-N56GOC GTX560 1GB DDR5 @ R1838
Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB x2 @ R2322
OCZ Agility 3 60GB @ R905
LITE-ON iHAS524 @ R167
Antec VP550P @ R597
Antec 100 @ R478

Total: R9967

The AMD platform was always meant to be cheaper, and the lack of a high-end chassis, motherboard without USB 3.0 front-panel headers and half the available RAM are all to keep costs down in a bid to maintain performance. While I cannot doubt that the inclusion of a SSD makes it a bit more worthwhile, AMD's FX-8120 is just really a quad-core in the end (for now) and the Intel build would easily be the better option when comparing performance-per watt, efficiency and the gains to be had when overclocking. Bulldozer performs really well with DDR3-1866 RAM, but the Intel rig gets away with slower RAM but with double the available space.

For content creation its better to have more available RAM and a better platform on which to code your games on. You'll also want to keep things going for a while, and the upgrade paths on both Intel's LGA1155 and AMD's AM3 sockets are still looking very good. However, single-threaded apps will perform better on the Intel rig, and seeing as how the Core i7 920 is still regarded as the default baseline for high-end gaming performance over two years later, sticking to the i5 might not be a bad idea.

P.S. Because I'd be sticking my foot in my own mouth because I didn't recommend a board to your earlier that had a USB 3.0 front-panel header, please swap out the MSI in my earlier build for this, the GIGABYTE Z68XP-UD3. A tad more expensive, but worth it in the end. As more Z77 boards pop up I'm sure you could change back to one of those before making your purchase.

[GeometriX]

I'll just chime in here that I have to agree with McD. AMD's 8-cores just can't match Intel's HT quads. Even though it's been shown that Hyper-Threading only adds about 10-20% performance in 3D rendering, those base cores are obviously much more powerful than AMD's effort.

Also, yeah, more RAM is king, certainly more so than faster RAM. I'd definitely suggest getting a bigger HDD though. Rendering of any sort churns out massive amounts of data (you're rendering lossless image sequences, surely), so 1TB would be what I'd consider to be a minimum. An SSD is a nice to have but almost pointless in this environment unless you have R10k to spend just on storage. The only time you'd actually put it to use would be with real-time video editing but then you're better off with HDDs set up for that specific purpose.

[McDangerous]

I'll even go as far as to say that my 4GHz i7 920 will beat out the 8150 and the 2500K in multi-threaded apps. Obviously single threaded the SB architecture will outshine the X58 setup, but any modern rendering app is multi-threaded.

I still can't believe you're suggesting that the guy spend R2300 on HDDs! It boggles my mind! Pre-flood, you could have had double that amount for the same price. Surely it makes sense to just wait a month or two and save a massive wad of cash?

Also, and this comes from someone who actually has a high-end chassis and upgraded a lot back in the day, it really isn't worth it. I'd trade my customized HAF 922 for a budget chassis and a better graphics card any day of the week. At the end of the day, you spend your time looking at your monitor, not your case.

[Elyaradine]

Thanks for the replies! It's awesome to get a nice variety too, for comparison. ;) I've been way out of the loop with hardware tech -- partly because it hurts my pocket when I see cool new stuff coming out, and partly because I started to feel how little it matters to have the cool new stuff.

I'll hold off on the hard drives (two of my TB ones are being replaced under warranty; I'll replace the third later), get more RAM (my current 4GB is painful, and by far my biggest bottleneck), and read up a little on the graphics cards just to make sure there aren't any niggles with my 3D viewports.

I'll order parts and build this baby in the next couple of weeks. Here's hoping putting computers together hasn't changed in the past four years. ;D

[Wesley]

I still can't believe you're suggesting that the guy spend R2300 on HDDs! It boggles my mind! Pre-flood, you could have had double that amount for the same price. Surely it makes sense to just wait a month or two and save a massive wad of cash?

'Tis the nature of the beast. I mean, who are we kidding - are hard drive prices really going to drop that fast? Western Digital has factories in other countries and non-flood-damaged locations that were previously under Hitachi's ownership. I'm assuming a lot of that has cleared up already and factories and supply are slowly returning to normal, but I don't expect the companies to drop prices for a bit longer while the consumer is unawares. Maybe Seagate will do it quicker because they've also dropped their warranties and it allows them to push out more drives for more money, but I can see WD holding off for a while (they always were the more expensive brand anyway).

But I still can't believe you asked the guy to buy the i7 2600K which is a thousand Rand more when he could just go up one multiplier on the i5 2500K :-P

[GeometriX]

The 2500K has no Hyper-Threading.

[McDangerous]

Even if it takes longer for the prices to drop, it still makes sense to rather spend the money that you're suggesting on higher performance parts, which will extend the lifespan of his system. HDDs are easy and soon-to-be affordable to add in, but replacing a CPU is a schlep.

My setup is the best, search your feelings, you know it to be true...

[Wesley]

SYSTEM BUILDERS: R8500 TO R10,500

[charly]

ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z or Asus P8Z68-V/GEN3. Exactly the same price.

[Wesley]

ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z or Asus P8Z68-V/GEN3. Exactly the same price.

Personally I'd go for the P8Z68 out of the two, but only for the extra flexibility in upgrading your rig and putting in PCI-E add-on cards.

[McDangerous]

At first I'd say the Maximus, but seeing as it doesn't have an available PCI-Ex 1x slot when two graphics cards are installed, I'd go for the P8Z68 too. You would be limited to 8x/8x crossfire and SLi, but you won't notice that much of a difference going from 8x/8x to 16x/16x.