Discussion Forums > Technology
Help with building a tower
Freedom Kira:
I'd recommend you wait on the SSD as well. From what I've heard, they're supposed to drop in price to less than $1/GB next year. Most likely depends on a lot of things though.
I was introduced to the Mushkin brand about a year ago. Most of their stuff is pretty decent and usually a bit cheaper than other brands. Watch reviews though - when a certain Mushkin product sucks, it really shows.
kitamesume:
--- Quote from: datora on July 10, 2011, 05:55:23 AM ---.
* $49.99 - Western Digital Caviar Black WD7502AAEX 750GB SATA 6
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136794
--- End quote ---
i see this at 70$ but DANG @ 70$ its still sweet imho, two of these would make up like 1TB formatted space for like 140$.
--- Quote from: datora on July 10, 2011, 05:55:23 AM ---.
EDIT[/b]: forgot to mention the 18 dB max. noise on this model. That's the kind'a quiet I'm talkin' about![/size] ]
--- End quote ---
you could always replace the fan with a quieter one, maybe bigger to fill up the loss in air flow.
--- Quote from: datora on July 10, 2011, 05:55:23 AM ---.
- GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD5
I just passed on it for $184 delivered, and now it's back up to $198 ... but it's a bit too much for budget. It was going for $145 about 10 or 12 weeks back, so I'm hoping that deal will come around again & I'll jump on it then. I'm not married to this board, but I definitely want one with very similar configuration, and the price ceiling is $150 with hopes for something closer to ~$130-ish.
--- End quote ---
i think the board is abit overkill, do you really need that many pci-e slots? theres the UD3s that are around 160$ and below.
considering if you`d be putting two 2-slotted GPUs you`ll be blocking 2 pci-e slots so those are considered like, useless? even with a single 2-slotted card you`d still be blocking one.
[160$]GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ AMD 990FX
[150$]GIGABYTE GA-990XA-UD3 AM3+ AMD 990X
what i think is that, going more than 2xGPU is pure enthusiast. dual high-end cards(HD6950 or GTX560 Ti and up) are pretty much everything you`ll need, even with a res of 2560x1440.
datora:
.
As far as the SSDs go, I've considered $1 per GB to be the "buy" point on a SATA II for the past half year. Now I'm adjusting it slightly to the "buy" point for SATA III, and it should be <$1 per GB formatted. So example, a SATA III 64 GB drive formats @ ~59 GB, therefore it should cost $59 or less delivered and inclusive of all taxes. I think that point will happen by September, barring a complete meltdown of the U.S./world economy.
Ideally, I'd like to grab an 80 or a 90 GB SSD at that price point, and I estimate my chances are close to 100% by October, or perhaps in the runup to Christmas. I've already seen a 90 GB drive go for $90 in the last month, and there just was that Shell Shocker for a WD SSD for $200 for a 256 GB SATA II, so ....
--- Quote from: kitamesume on July 10, 2011, 11:02:09 AM ---
--- Quote from: datora on July 10, 2011, 05:55:23 AM --- * $49.99 - Western Digital Caviar Black WD7502AAEX 750GB SATA 6
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136794
--- End quote ---
i see this at 70$ but DANG @ 70$ its still sweet imho, two of these would make up like 1TB formatted space for like 140$.
--- End quote ---
Actually, they format to 698 GB each, so 2x 750 GB drives are ~1.35 TB formatted, plus a few extra GB. I'm kicking myself a bit. When the deal showed up, I should have immediately grabbed two of these and scrubbed the SSD. But, I haz a SSD lust and was not thinking as clearly as I should have. Could have either done a RAID 0 for speed or used them as image/mirrors for each other for complete system redundancy. Oh well ...
--- Quote from: kitamesume on July 10, 2011, 11:02:09 AM ---
--- Quote from: datora on July 10, 2011, 05:55:23 AM ---EDIT[/b]: forgot to mention the 18 dB max. noise on this model. That's the kind'a quiet I'm talkin' about![/size] ]
--- End quote ---
you could always replace the fan with a quieter one, maybe bigger to fill up the loss in air flow.
--- End quote ---
Indeed, I am considering exactly that for the BALDER SD1283. I will order that sometime this week and go for the rebate, so it should come in at $24 (eventually). Once I play with it and see its performance & hear it under some overclock settings, I may very well spend $9 or $12 for a 140 mm ultra-silent fan and figure out how to mount it.
I've been bolting over-sized fans onto my cooling blocks for close to 20 years now, and I usually solder on a handful of copper wire &/or mesh in the process to increase the heatsink mass and surface area for radiating heat. First time I did that was on a Pentium 120 MHz that I overclocked to 150 MHz, and it ran 10°C cooler when I was done ... great little Dell motherboard hardware hack to pull that off. :)
--- Quote from: kitamesume on July 10, 2011, 11:02:09 AM ---
--- Quote from: datora on July 10, 2011, 05:55:23 AM ---- GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD5
--- End quote ---
i think the board is abit overkill, do you really need that many pci-e slots? theres the UD3s that are around 160$ and below.
--- End quote ---
Yah. I am looking at those also. The UD5 interested me because after adding one large GPU card in, I have copious expansion capacity left over. It has 2 PCIe 16x slots plus another @ 8x ... which would run anything conceivable (such as a video capture card and/or a top end sound card). This, even after I probably upgrade to dual GPUs in ~2 years.
I'd like the board to serve for four to five years as my primary system, then retire it as a secondary system for a few years after that. Nearly every computer I've owned has served a full ten years, and most of them about 12 before I finally junked them.
Anyway, if I do drop down to the UD3 (or equivalent), I'd also expect to drop my buy price down in to the ~$110-120 range; no way I'll fork out $140 plus for one of those. I'm fairly name-brand agnostic, so I'm watching MSI and ASUS and a couple others also. Fortunately, I can afford to wait it out for a few weeks and jump when a seriously good price comes up.
Even though I rely on newegg, I have continued to watch other sites and google items up regularly. It's just that, so far, newegg has been THE best price for 95%+ of everything. They'll keep getting my business so long as they keep doing that. ;) ;D
kitamesume:
hardly see any sound card use even a 4x slot, and video capture cards shouldn't use more than 8x slot. so the 16, 8, 4 configuration of the 150$ should fit the bucket.
datora:
.
Well, I was speaking in general examples. This one:
- GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3
is actually on my "to-watch" list. However, it's $168 right now (including delivery) ... about $30 over budget. If/When it drops under $140, if nothing else comparable has hit that price by then, I'll very likely go with it.
I don't like losing the 1x PCIe slot to a video card, but that's standard design these days, so I just have to eat it. The other 1x slot, if you check the feedback, also has issues in that some cards can't fit against the heat sinks ... a brainfart in design. So, two expansion slots are removed from availability.
That leaves another 16x slot ... which can use either a vid capture card or another GPU. If a GPU is put in there, then the PCI slot is lost. Again, standard design issue these days ... but the UD5 board has slightly more flexibility.
Perhaps the 4x slots would be good enough for vid capture, perhaps not. I'm getting ahead of myself a bit, but I am also looking to future use and upgrades that I can foresee within 18-24 months (if Things Go Well).
Actually, I'm pretty unhappy with current mobo design ... the standard double-wide video cards these days have really crippled expansion capability, making people choose between having high-end video OR Something Else. Sucks to be paying for a board where 2 or 3 slots are blocked or useless.
I am pretty confused as to why the primary 16x GPU slot isn't in slot position #7 where it would take up the empty #8 slot in a case. That would leave all of the other 6 slot positions open, with (at most) one of them being blocked by a 2nd GPU.
True elite systems designed for three or four cards are a different design issue; people are getting those knowing from the beginning that nothing else will fit ... but for these more general systems, there is a lot of non-innovative and practical thinking going on.
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