Wifes Scrounge PC components

Melee Penguin · Aug 19, 2008

Ok, so she's got a 680i EVGA mobo, Intel Processor (forget which one, don't feel like looking at it) and two 7900 cards that are going to be run in SLi configuration. I'll also be picking up Vista Ultimate 64.

She needs a heatsink, power supply, HDD, and RAM these are my choices:

Same heatsink she had before, I broke the feet off it

Seagate TB HDD

Corsair PSU

OCZ Reaper RAM

Good choices?

EmAn · Aug 19, 2008

That looks fairly decent although for the heatsink I would recommend the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme (TRUE)

VinnyTAMU · Aug 19, 2008

I have run that same heat sink with a Q6600 G0 running a slight overclock and it keep the temps reasonable. Everything looks good as far as I am concerned.

Melee Penguin · Aug 19, 2008

VinnyTAMU said:
I have run that same heat sink with a Q6600 G0 running a slight overclock and it keep the temps reasonable. Everything looks good as far as I am concerned.

She doesn't have a Q6600 though, it's a Pentium D or something. Not a Core 2 Duo, but still a 64 bit CPU.

It's not going to be overclocked either, all she plays is WoW. :-/

GullLars · Aug 20, 2008

Well, depending on how much storage you need, 1tb could be really overkill for your purpose. The Western Digital 640gb is faster and cheaper, and 640gb is still a lot.
If the price or size isn't a problem, you could go with a Western Digital Velociraptor (300GB), they are about 30% faster then the 640gb or 1tb disks. You might be concerned with noise, but you could use rubber brackets or something like a drive silencing bay. And they aren't that noisy anyways, at least not compared to older harddrives or older raptors.
The other parts seems good and should have no problem running WoW smoothly.
Depending on the budget, you could also consider raiding 2x WD 640gb or velociraptors for really fast map and instance load times. This is could be good if your wife hates waiting for loads

As for loads, 2x 640gb disks in raid-0 will be cheaper and load maps faster then 1 velociraptor, but then you would have 1.28tb of storage wich could be way overkill depending on the other use of the computer.

Melee Penguin · Aug 20, 2008

GullLars said:
Well, depending on how much storage you need, 1tb could be really overkill for your purpose. The Western Digital 640gb is faster and cheaper, and 640gb is still a lot.
If the price or size isn't a problem, you could go with a Western Digital Velociraptor (300GB), they are about 30% faster then the 640gb or 1tb disks. You might be concerned with noise, but you could use rubber brackets or something like a drive silencing bay. And they aren't that noisy anyways, at least not compared to older harddrives or older raptors.
The other parts seems good and should have no problem running WoW smoothly.
Depending on the budget, you could also consider raiding 2x WD 640gb or velociraptors for really fast map and instance load times. This is could be good if your wife hates waiting for loads As for loads, 2x 640gb disks in raid-0 will be cheaper and load maps faster then 1 velociraptor, but then you would have 1.28tb of storage wich could be way overkill depending on the other use of the computer.

We wouldn't be utilizing a raid array and although the 2x 640gb WD drives would be cheaper per GB than the 1TB Seagate, there's also the 2 year warranty difference.

It's just a scrounge PC that will run WoW in sleep mode if it needed to with the capability to play other games that she's interested in i.e. Spore, Sims 3, etc etc...

GullLars · Aug 23, 2008

Ok, then i would strongly suggest you partition the TB dive in 2-3 partitions.
1 for OS+programs, 1 for games and frequently used material, and the rest of the disk for storage. Sugested sizes 40-50gb + 50-100gb + rest of disk.
I don't know how into HDDs you are, but partitioning the drive like this will give you 30-50% better performance for the OS and games. And i would strongly suggest you make the partitions in the order i posted, since the first partition will be the fastest one.
The first 100-150gbs of these 1tb drives are actually faster then the old raptors when it comes to transfer rates.

don256us · Aug 23, 2008

The PSU is a good choice with the 80+ cert. Corsair makes a good PSU. I have a smaller version of that one.

For the heatsink, I like this one so much I got another for another machine. Very tall but keeps my Pentium D in my 680i EVGA MB cool without much noise at all.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835185038

Wifes Scrounge PC components

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don256us

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