£500 budget recommendations and UK Suppliers?

[Crazy Buddhist]

Building a rig £500 budget. i7 looks impossible though if I could get the gear in the states thats $800 which might go the mile. Don't need a case.

Desktop ATX will need

CPU
MoBo
RAM
GPU (x 2?)
HD Drives
PSU
? Aftermarket cooler

We want performance for rendering graphics and making music. Multitasking a must. The recipient is my nephew .. a gifted artist starting his BA in Fine Art. (Gifted at everything .. got 8 A's and 4 A*'s then 4 A's in his final school exams lol)

Not sure where the value is these days but I'd like a good bang for my buck. Dual core at least but preferably 3 or 4 and something that can maybe take a good overclock if I give it good air.

Storage ideally 1T (500G OK) actually in a RAID config (i.e total visible 1T or 500G ) .. want the storage to be optimised for data integrity and speed ..

Have got DVD drives and CD, case, Screen, Keyboard and mouse, TV card.

He'll use Adobe CS and such and do some gaming too and use music software and wants a good sound card.

Any tips on whats good in the market appreciated. It's going to be heavily modded.

CrazyB

[apbrit2009]

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/CPUs+%2F+Processors/AMD/Phenom+II+AM3/AMD+Phenom+II+X3+720+Black+Edition+2.8GHz%2C+Socke t+AM3%2C+Retail+?productId=35330
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Motherboards/Socket+AM3+(AMD)/Asus+M4A785TD-V+EVO%2C+AMD+785G+Chipset%2C+DDR3%2C+AM3%2C+ATX+?p roductId=37387
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Memory/DDR3/DDR3+1333+(PC3-10666)/Corsair+4GB+TwinX+DDR3+PC3-10600+1333Mhz+Dual+Channel+DDR3+(2x2GB)+?productId =37150
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Graphics+Cards/PCI-E/nVIDIA+GeForce+9+Series/PALIT+NVIDIA+9800GT+1GB+%2Fw+HDMI+?productId=37147
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Hard+Drives/Serial+ATA/1Tb+Hitachi+Deskstar+7K1000.B+SATA-2+Hard+Drive+16MB+Cache+?productId=34559
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Power+Supplies/500w+%2B/800W+Arianet+Black+HE+Gaming+PSU+?productId=35821

cost (shipping excluded): 411.96

[Crazy Buddhist]

Thanks +rep.

The mobo is an interesting one for sure and I hadn't come across it before.

One question .... why did you choose to put the Nvidia 9800GT on a board with an ATi chipset and CPU? ... the Radeon 4770 and 4850 can both be had at similar prices and have equal/possibly better performance. I expect driver releases from AMD will continue to improve performance on all-AMD systems.

"The performance is higher than expected. The Radeon HD 4770 is able to beat the HD 4830 and the Geforce 9800 GT most of the time and sometimes even get on the level of cards that are more expensive like the Radeon HD 4850 or the Geforce 9800 GTX." - Tom's Hardware

Also ... I have seen the AMD Black Edition - AMD Phenom II X4 3.2 GHz Processor at around £139 which is still in the budget. I can see that extra core + 400mhz stock making a difference on his graphics and rendering work .. unless the Phenom X3 has more OC room.

EDIT: I SAW ONE REVIEW WHERE THEY "UNLOCKED" THE FOURTH CORE ON A PHENOM X3 ???? Possible? Wise? If that is true isn't the chip likely to be an X3 because it had a flaw in one core?

Thoughts?

For comparison I'd be interested to see someone else offer up an Intel based alternative if anyone has some good ideas ???

CrazyB

[Crazy Buddhist]

EDIT: I SAW ONE REVIEW WHERE THEY "UNLOCKED" THE FOURTH CORE ON A PHENOM X3 ???? Possible? Wise? If that is true isn't the chip likely to be an X3 because it had a flaw in one core?

Thought as much.

From Hardwarezone.com (http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=2908&cid=19&pg=2)

"To be brief, the line-up of Phenom II processors can generally be divided into three series: 900, 800 and 700. The 900 series represents chips that offer the full performance features whereas the other two series are formed by die harvesting, which means re-using chips that have had certain controlled defects. Controlled because the thorough testing by AMD has validated them usable and pose no cause for concern. This is a common practice throughout the industry for many years now.

The 800 series is formed using chips with four fully functioning cores, but with defects in the cache, leaving them with only 4MB of useable L3 cache. The 700 series, on the other hand, has one faulty core, but with a fully functional cache. As such the 700 series is sort of unique and the only triple-core product in the market. This gives users a wider variety of options for a particular budget depending on their usage needs. For example, if you don't dabble with programs don't benefit much from quad cores, you could actually get better performance going with a triple-core processor that's clocked higher instead."

[slaveofconvention]

Ebuyer (http://www.ebuyer.com)

How's this?

http://www.slaveofconvention.com/imagestore/crazybspec.jpg

CPU - According to this fortnights Micromart - the Q6700 is the best bang for buck CPU available - quad core at 2.66Ghz stock and will almost always overclock to 3.3Ghz and give "i7 performance"...

GPU - HD4850 is good top-mid range GPU - again - very good bang for buck and easily scalable in the future if you want to go crossfire.

HD's - 3x 320GB SATAII Drives - the board supports Raid5 - these in R5 will give you 640GB of 100% redundant storage with a performance boost over a single drive

Cooler - Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro is still one of the best air coolers for S775 and excellent Value for money

PSU - A quality 600w SLI ready PSU is more than you need and will give you plenty of juice if you want to add a second GPU later

RAM - Only 2GB??? If you're going 32bit on the O/S you're limited to a TOTAL of 4GB systemwide - with the 1GB already on the GPU, you'd end up with about 2.8GB available if you went with 4GB - so 2GB is the sensible amount, especially if you're thinking dual GPU in the future as any memory on the second card would also come out of the 4GB total.

Mobo - Asus are usually good overclockers - this board supports all the FSB's you'll ever need, has raid 5 (as well as jbod, 0, 1 & 10) and is crossfire ready - about as future proof as you're going to get without spending a small fortune on still hugely overpriced i7 gear

Shipping is free if you go with the 5 day option (and I've often had deliveries in 2 days with this option)

I seriously doubt you could get much more for the money - while I know I bumped the budget a little, this is a bloody good system and well worth the extra £7.....

Everything is a quality branded product from a respected manufacturer - OCZ, Crucial, Asus, Sapphire, Arctic Cooling etc

EDIT: Note the CPU is OEM so there will be no cooler included - the aftermarket cooler is therefore essential to this build....

[slaveofconvention]

Just had a quick look over at Toms Hardware at the performance charts, and for a quick comparison....

In a combined CPU benchmark, the Intel scored 883.7 compared to the AMD's 792.4 (11.5% faster)
In 3dMark - 4850 scored 14643 against 9800s 14338 (a whole 2% faster lol)

[Crazy Buddhist]

slaveofconvention - many thanks +rep .. VERY nice build.

Looks like we're getting a bit of headroom on the budget so this could get interesting. Budget is now in the range of £700 - £800 BUT may be expanded to get the killer machine.

I already bought Windows 7 Home premium for the machine and it will be the x64 version (16G RAM limit) that is installed - given the nature of the work he will use the machine for. Main use will be Photoshop CS4 and video rendering etc ... so Looking for some more RAM as part of the package. Probably go to 8G.

As I understand it maxing performance of these softwares means having the O/S and programs on one drive (or RAID set) and scratch/page/data files on a second disk (or RAID set)

Sooo ... Can I run two RAID sets on the one controller or would I need a second add in card? Because ... for the storage I'm looking at doing RAID 5 with three of these:

Seagate BARRACUDA 7200.12 1TB 3.5IN 7200RPM 32MB SATA/300 @ £58.58 inc. VAT (http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?prodID=B207939)

Thoughts?

Matthew

[slaveofconvention]

You're spot on regarding the seperate drives for different tasks - the board I suggested has 6 SATA ports on the raid capable subsystem (and another 1 internal and 1 external i think on a seperate system) and you can usually define as many arrays as you want to. I'd probably consider two arrays if the budget will allow it - something like 2x320GB in raid 0 (very fast but no redundancy) for the C: with the OS and software installations, then the 3tb raid5 array (2tb usable - you lose the capacity of one drive to redundancy) as the D: for storage/files etc. Its a little more risky as if either of the first two drives goes, you lose everything on the C: but if you set it up right, that's just a matter of a reinstall - you keep everything you NEED on the D so it's all backed up and 640GB for O/S and software is WAY more than he'll ever be likely to need. The 600W PSU I suggested will more than handle that many drives.

Something like this maybe?

http://www.slaveofconvention.com/imagestore/crazybspec2.jpg

The risk of the Raid 0 array isn't a terminal one if you don't put anything important on that drive, and it'll free up a RAID capable SATA port to expand the R5 array to 4TB(3 usable) in the future.

With that much slack in the budget, you can maybe upgrade the GPU too but to be totally honest, while an i7 build might now be do-able at that budget, I really don't think the speed improvement would be real-world noticable - sure a benchmark would show it, but day-to-day I very much doubt it'd impact the system at all....

[slaveofconvention]

Hey, I just noticed - this is now pretty much the same as my current machine lol - I'm running a X64 Vista Ultimate based Q6700, 8GB Ram, 750GB HD with 4.5 TB on my server for storage although I have a 512MB 4870 not a 1GB 4850 lol - deja vu :s

[Crazy Buddhist]

LOL so basically you're edging me towards buying your system :D

A few points:

The 600W OCZ Stealth only has 3 SATA connectors for £10 more the 700W one has the 6 we'll need :up:

The P5Q PRO Turbo has 5 SATA ports on the Southbridge where the Intel Matrix Storage RAID system works. The P5Q PRO P45 at £10 more has 6 SATA ports (according to the specs on ebuyer ... could be wrong??). The Intel Matrix is very flexible in how it works but the CPU does some of the work - it's not all in the hardware.

You can set up multiple arrays with this kit on the same or different disks ....

e.g.
http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/pix/matrix-RAID_4drives_2005.jpg (href="http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=100593108)

So what I am now thinking of is a single fast drive (or 2 in RAID 0) for the O/S and apps. Then using the above schema but with 4 x 1TB drives set up thusly:

4 x 250G partitions in RAID 0 for scratch files, page files and working space for rendering and video etc. This will be very fast access read/write and speed up rendering jobs and system performance massively so provide 1 Terrabyte of very fast working space. (too much or little?? Video peeps out there let me know yr thoughts plz)

That leaves .. 4 x 750G partitions in RAID 5 on the same disks which would give him 2.25 Terrabytes of permanent storage with secure redundancy.

Thoughts?

CB

[slaveofconvention]

SystemS :p - Most of my storage is on a Windows Home Server in a Lian Li 343B case - your budget won't stretch to that :p Hell I still can't believe I dropped £250 on an empty alu box.....

The P5Q Pro Turbo has a total of 8 SATA ports - arranged as follows:
5 internal SATA on intel controller
1 external SATA on JMicro SATA/PATA controller
2 internal SATA on Silicon Image controller

I can't find detailed spec on the PRO on asus own site but I'd imagine it'll be identical.

Hard disk config is going to be up to you - if you're thinking about 2 additional drives for a R0 for C: why not up the 1TB's to 1.5's? Chances are the price wouldn't be that far different and then you could go with

4x 100gb R0 for C: (400GB no redundancy),
4x 250gb R0 for Scratch/temp (1TB no redundancy)
4x 1.15TB R5 for storage (3.45TV w/redundancy)

more of everything AND better £/gigabyte AND room for another drive in the future on the RAID ports. Bigger drives TEND to have a higher data density which gives slightly higher data thruput too....

http://www.slaveofconvention.com/imagestore/crazybspec3.jpg

[Crazy Buddhist]

Ah .. here be Dragons methinks ... putting the OS on the same RAID set up, unless it's in a protected area with redundancy is a bit of a no - no .... reason being the RAID is partly software. If you have a disk fail and can no longer boot into the OS you can end up in the soup with no noodles.

That's why I was thinking to have separate disk(s) for the O/s .. plus it's a genuine advantage to have them on separate physical disks to your page files and working space.

It could be done with RAID 10 on those 4 x 100G partitions which would deliver a swift and secure 200G drive but still on the same platters as the scratch files :think:

CB

[slaveofconvention]

A valid point and one that totally slipped past me - good catch... I'm thinking SSD but they still fall very much into the same boat as i7 in my opinion - all wonderful and stuff but still stupidly overpriced....

Bearing in mind your comments above, I'd drop back to 3 1.5's, and a pair of 320's for the C.... As it happens, the Silicon controller will also do Raid 0 or 1, so you COULD go with 640GB of Raid0 on the silicon controller for the OS etc, then put the storage drives (whatever quantity - min 3 and capacity you end up having the money for) on the intel controller - it'll give you the different platters you correctly pointed out you'll benefit from, the redundancy where you need it, and even more expandability for the future.

I do have ONE question though.... Really, does he NEED this much storage space? Fair enough, I'm using over 4TB at home, but I'm not exactly being sensible or efficient. Might it be worth looking into multi-screen setups or some other way to spend the money so that it really benefits the user experience instead of just pumping up the numbers....

[Crazy Buddhist]

A valid point and one that totally slipped past me - good catch...

Thx ..


I'm I'm thinking SSD but they still fall very much into the same boat as i7 in my opinion - all wonderful and stuff but still stupidly overpriced....

Agreed 100%


Bearing in mind your comments above, I'd drop back to 3 1.5's, and a pair of 320's for the C.... As it happens, the Silicon controller will also do Raid 0 or 1, so you COULD go with 640GB of Raid0 on the silicon controller for the OS etc, then put the storage drives (whatever quantity - min 3 and capacity you end up having the money for) on the intel controller - it'll give you the different platters you correctly pointed out you'll benefit from, the redundancy where you need it, and even more expandability for the future.

Good call .. I just spotted that on the Silicon controller too .. there is one ? in my mind .. everywhere I read "Drive Xpert" only works with your hard disks in data mode ... or something like that .. and I have no idea what they mean? Specifically does it mean the disks can't be the OS/boot or does it mean you can't RAID a pair or DVD burners or ... what? :dead:


I do have ONE question though.... Really, does he NEED this much storage space? Fair enough, I'm using over 4TB at home, but I'm not exactly being sensible or efficient. Might it be worth looking into multi-screen setups or some other way to spend the money so that it really benefits the user experience instead of just pumping up the numbers....

He's doing a three year Fine Art degree with a high concentration on new media, digital, film, web etc. The idea of this build is that it will get him to the end of that three year degree and be good for the journey.

I think he'll need the 1TB fast storage for video rendering jobs and the 2.25TB is to be sure he has the space for three years work + music + photo's ... He also makes music and he'll be doing that with the machine too as he has a midi keyboard .. etc

It might be overkill ... but maybe not.

CB

[slaveofconvention]

Going with "It's better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it" philosophy then :p

I tried to download the manual for the mobo from asus but in my rushed pre-work attempt this morning, I couldn't find it, so right now I can't answer the Q relating to the silicon controller - give me time *grin*

Ok so a little more digging on the ASUS site came up with this...

"Due to the Windows XP/ Vista limitation, the RAID array with the total capacity over 2TB cannot be set as a boot disk. A RAID array over 2TB can only be set as a data disk only" - note this doesn't mention Windows 7 at all but it's probably safe to assume it'd still apply....

This is a caveat on the Silicon controller, so as long as you keep the C: Array below 2TB (which you plan to do) LOGIC dictates that it should be bootable and ideal for your planned use - the whole DriveXpert thing is twaddle and just an ASUS phrase for on-demand RAID1 so ignore that utterly....

One last thing - you said you don't need a case - may I ask why not? What have you got up your sleeve? This is going to be a serious heat producer and it'll need a very good well cooled case to keep it from cooking itself - especially with the Quad, 4850 and as many as 5 or 6 HD's all pumping heat into it....

[Crazy Buddhist]

I found a bunch of confusing stuff on that controller but have found some people who successfully got their OS to run on it. DriveXpert ... does RAID 1 and RAID 0 BUT it is not pure hardware driven and is running on 1x Pci-E lane which is a bottleneck.

Undecided but am now thinking of doing a plain RAID 1 with 2 * 1.5TB disks for his long term storage there if anything .. or buying a RAID card.

We have a bunch of cases around and we were going to mod one and add the cooling (air) .... still a possibility .. however given the heat you rightly say this will produce I am now considering buying a case as I have found a couple of examples that seem to offer enough cooling .... and buying 4 or 5 quiet 120mm case fans won't come far short of the cost of these anyway:

CM Storm Scout:

http://image.ebuyer.com/UK/P0165238_C0000023_P0000000.jpg (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/165238)

Antec 900 Gaming Tower:

http://www.computerwebstore.co.uk/or_images/OR29000000100101.jpg (http://www.computerwebstore.co.uk/productinfo.asp?ProductID=49744)

CB

[slaveofconvention]

Well my PC which is an almost identical spec with a slightly higher GPU is based in the Antec 900 and it's quiet as can be (quietest PC in the house, including, ironically, my media centre) and runs at perfectly acceptable temperatures...

Only negative I have to say about the case is that it isn't particularly mod-able - just about every surface already has something going on so there isn't a huge amount of potential without LOTS of work