once in a lifetime opportunity, plz help

[Steamroller]

I am in need of some hard core advice please. I have a once in a lifetime opportunity to build my dream machine. My wife is re-enlisting in the air force for another 4 years and part of her bonus money will go to this project. So, my budget cap will be around $12,000. Only problem is that it will have to wait until December or January (I may die of a heart attack waiting with utter excitement by then) I have been an Intel fan forever, but AMD is really kicking in the heat. So… so far I have a few things set in stone
1. RADEON X1900 XTX 512MB x2
2. Turbo-Cool 1KW Power Supply
3. PC-V2100 plus/PC-V2100B plus case (maybe)
4. 2 Lightscribe DVD+rw drives
5. Soundblaster X-Fi

The rest is still up for debate. Do I go with scsi 15k 147 gb drives in raid 0. Or try the sata route instead? Which is really the fastest. Western Digital is sooo damn close in closing the performance gap that I just don’t know anymore.

I also want to use phase cooling. Is asetek the best? Or is Prometeia Mach II GT ?

Also what about peltier air conditioning for the case? Melcor makes some wicked AC units that can bring the PC to almost 0. Melcor AC Unit

And what of condensation inside the pc? I have never dabbled in water or sub zero cooling before, this is the scariest part of this venture…

Now that the cpu is cooled what about water cooling for the video cards and the hard drives….possibly the ram as well? (Ram will be OCZ…loyalty there)


Worst of all…how the heck am I going to fit all this inside a Lian Li PC-V2100 plus case??? Is there bigger that still looks cool?

And will there be a decent Crossfire mobo by then? I do not like asus that much, been burned by them too many times in the past….abit falls in a close second too.

My monitor debate is the easiest. Dell 30” or Apple 30” or Samsung 32” LCD displays?
My wife told me I can do this almost 2 months ago, the research is killing me…a true dream come true for me..heck for anyone for that matter. But it is a real pain in the butt to try to figure out what really would make the fastest home pc in the world for a moment. Having sacrificed my career to be a stay at home dad for the next 5 years has given me an opportunity to really seek these things out, and explore new levels of boredom, trust me changing diapers is not as fun as closing car deals, although it is much more rewarding. But I need to build this to keep my sanity and give me a sense of accomplishment in something other than being a dad, and housekeeper, cook, laundry slave, and dishwasher. So please I need your best advice in which direction to go for some of this stuff. I am goin nutz. Please help an old computer geek. ( I already know spending 12k is stupid, but hey, once in a lifetime ya gotta go a little crazy eh?)

 

[Burdman27911]

Waiting until the end of the year isn't really a bad thing (I've gotta do it too), For the Intel side of things Conroe is coming out and it's looking very promising. AMD will have the socket AM2 out for 6mo by that point too, so at the very least there will be new better options.

Personally, I really wouldn't do the peltier cooled case, peltiers aren't the most efficient and I can't really see what great advantage you'll get if you are already phase cooling the CPU and watercooling the rest of important things.

Speaking of watercooling, I think you should also cool the chipset if you are cooling the rest of gear. Also I have heard that it's silly to cool the ram, but I haven't tried it nor heard many things about it so I can't really knock it.

As for your condensation, you'll have to insulate the mobo and all around the CPU because that will be sub-zero, but the water itself won't be an issue because it can not get below room temp (unless you cool the water with a pelt)...

$12,000 is a lot of money, personally I wouldn't blow it all... but heck a good portion of it would be gone . Good luck on deciding, and happy housekeeping.

PS - to the forums, nice to meet you and hope you enjoy your stay

 

[Deadbot1_1973]

well..just another view point.I'm not a super hardcore OC'er. I prefer the modest jump/safe oc's. With that type of cash to spend I would look at getting every top of the line component...and spend some quality time with it making it look nice and be quiet. you have the money for a huge LCD...why not a HUGE projector setup. Why settle for 32" when you could have 10 FEET.

Personally..I would just go for really high end W/C rather than sub zero. Ambient cooling would be great, but there are a lot of probs involved with getting under that.

Go for a system that will give you a great experience...not one that has all the braggin rights, but is bound to give you fits.

If portability isn't an issue..then build a huge external radiator setup. Give that water so much time and surface area to loose heat that the chips can't raise the heat up much.

 

[moonlightcheese]

1. RADEON X1900 XTX 512MB x2
2. Turbo-Cool 1KW Power Supply
3. PC-V2100 plus/PC-V2100B plus case (maybe)
4. 2 Lightscribe DVD+rw drives
5. Soundblaster X-Fi

first off, the ATi single card solution is better than nVidia single cards for most games, but SLI regularly beats Crossfire. aside from this, in december the GPU market will of course dramatically change (as it always does) so be aware that this will not be the top card several months from now.

The rest is still up for debate. Do I go with scsi 15k 147 gb drives in raid 0. Or try the sata route instead? Which is really the fastest. Western Digital is sooo damn close in closing the performance gap that I just don’t know anymore.

SCSI will soon be a thing of the past since SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) has been released. basically this is a full duplex serial connection (essentially two SATA connections); one for up and one downstream. this increases effective SATA bandwidth to 600MBps as opposed to the SCSI variant. SAS is expected to go much further. there will be 15kRPM drives available soon for SAS. expect it on server boards in the near future; by december probably on high end consumer boards.

don't know anything about sub-zero cooling, i'm a watercooler.

And will there be a decent Crossfire mobo by then? I do not like asus that much, been burned by them too many times in the past….abit falls in a close second too.

motherboard technology changes even faster than chip tech. there is no telling what will be available in december and it's impossible to make a conjecture on who will be the better performer. start reading up in early november when you're getting ready to purchase.

My monitor debate is the easiest. Dell 30” or Apple 30” or Samsung 32” LCD displays?

i love my Samsung 930BF. on a sidenote, viewsonic just released a 1ms access time monitor. from what i understand it is VERY high quality. i can only assume that by december will will have sub 1ms access times on LCDs. it may even be that SED monitors will become available by that time but i doubt it. make sure you strike a balance with performance vs size. you can get a bit more performance and better, richer colors from some of the non-wide aspect monitors (such as the new viewsonic and others).

My wife told me I can do this almost 2 months ago, the research is killing me…a true dream come true for me..heck for anyone for that matter. But it is a real pain in the butt to try to figure out what really would make the fastest home pc in the world for a moment. Having sacrificed my career to be a stay at home dad for the next 5 years has given me an opportunity to really seek these things out, and explore new levels of boredom, trust me changing diapers is not as fun as closing car deals, although it is much more rewarding. But I need to build this to keep my sanity and give me a sense of accomplishment in something other than being a dad, and housekeeper, cook, laundry slave, and dishwasher. So please I need your best advice in which direction to go for some of this stuff. I am goin nutz. Please help an old computer geek. ( I already know spending 12k is stupid, but hey, once in a lifetime ya gotta go a little crazy eh?)

your level of boredom make the perfect ingredients for a great overclocker. this is an awesome way to experiment and overclocking can be time consuming. this is the perfect situation. you can overclock, setup some tests, go take care of some things, come back every few minutes to make sure tests are still running; i wish i had this kind of tiem to devote to my OC mania and gaming.

and i know it's exciting thinking about it but that 7 or 8 months is a long time for you to already be contemplating parts to buy. the only thing i would say should definitely be on your shopping list is SAS drives (if available on consumer boards) and a Intel Conroe core chip. the other parts are up in the air. come back in september/november and you'll have more definitive answers.

in the meantime, i would say do some tinkering with what you have and see what you can pull off. not sure what your OC or tweaking or whatever your experience is but a few tips:

test a lot when overclocking
wrist straps for grounding (never under-estimate static, it has cost me at least 1k)
don't buy parts that you won't be satisfied with, if you're unsure, get the best; regretting your purchase is the worst feeling in the world.
test some more
research A LOT before purchasing ANYTHING
more testing

 

[Steamroller]

WoW! Thank you so much for your kindness. I posted this on Tom's Hardware and am currently being battered for being a retarded moron for spending that kind of money on a system. Thank you for respecting my drive to build this thing.

As far as overclocking...I have a little experience..last thing I ever overclocked was my old tbird 1200. (factory unlocked) (no pencil needed )

I know it is way too early to even think about the specific parts, however the hdd was the main concern, as well as can I even fit all this into the case. It is fun to piece it together and adapt it as the tech changes.

ATI will always be in my computer. never nvidia again. Currently I have 3 ati cards in my system. 9800 pro, radeon 7000 pci, and the HDTV wonder pci card. I love ATI, and I will always support them. Quad SLI is the only thing that makes me even slightly consider switching...but damn, isn't loyalty worth anything anymore???

Oh and thank you for giving me direction on the whole scsi thing!

I am looking forward to this project and can't wait to post pics in January. Which is also one more reason why I am starting my inquiries now. I plan on building a cardboard mockup of all the components to help me figure out how to mod the case. When the time comes to purchase all the stuff, well I should have a near perfect model to copy. Makes the build time faster, and the case should be cut and painted by then as well. (speaking of..is there a bigger case? I think it may be too tight for the lian li....OH and uhm, I am starting to shy away from the melcore sytem cooler. condensation and frost scare me..a lot!!

Thanks again for a warm welcome

 

[Burdman27911]

Hehe, cardboard. Whatever works for you, I got bored with my wait and drew something up with the help of CAD, one benefit of that is you can render it when you are done and sit back and smile at the shiny pictures, altho finding the sizes of everything and having experience with CAD helps ....

Anyway, with the phase change system you'll most likely have that in a separate case that your main case sits on, this is the way I normally see it done, otherwise you'd really need something large (see EC's beast of a case in the "project logs" section). Also for the radiator you'll still probably have room to mount it internally, but if it comes down to it you can externally mount it on the back (think swiftech kits). THIS is your case right? If so, I do think room should not be an issue granted that the Phase equipment will be in the separate case.

If you have any questions or thoughts post away, I'm sure we're all glad to help out.


PS - (hey I keep forgetting stuff to say), Have you checked out the extreme cooling section of the forums? They will surely be a big help and everyone there knows tons more than I do about phase cooling and the like.

 

[fabulouscoops]

Welcome to the forums

You should be able to get everything you desire for under $12k. Save some money for programs and games. Also, figure computer furniture into the price.

The problem with dreaming about components 8 months in advance is that nearly everything will be off the bleeding edge by that time. The video cards will be for sure. You may be looking at a new AMD socket which means that the power supply you are looking at might not have the adatpers to fit a newer motherboard design. Vista will be out so you will want loads of fast memory that is not even available now. You get the point.

I would say keep researching and stay connected to the compter enthusiast world. You have an exciting time ahead for the next year. Good Luck and nobody has said it yet, but hey, cool wife.

 

[Electron Chaser]

to the forums and the addiction.

On OCforums Overkill is just enough. So you found the right place to put your feet up and chat with other extreme PC enthusiasts of the world in a flame free forum.

As far as the MB and CPU I would wait for the AM2 processor line that AMD is releasing soon and see how that pans out. Myself also a long time Intel user is also jumping ship to AMD once the AM2 comes out.

However what you want to do in regards to cooling, Phase, WCing and that AC unit that Lian Li is not going to cut it. So you are either going to have to go custom or drop the AC unit. Mountain Mods Cases are an option however due to their size and dimensions you are going to have to come up with another way of mounting the phase change unit to the case.

I do phase change and WCing and I have built a case similar in requirements in regards to what you want to do with cooling. Click on the Denali Project link in my sig for some ideas. If I can be of any help feel free to PM or IM me.


-EC

 

[moonlightcheese]

As far as the MB and CPU I would wait for the AM2 processor line that AMD is releasing soon and see how that pans out. Myself also a long time Intel user is also jumping ship to AMD once the AM2 comes out.

i'm curious as to why you are switching to AM2. you couldn't choose a worse time to make the switch lol. have you seen initial performance comparisons of AM2 and Conroe on Tom's Hardware and Anandtech? check those out. Conroe is one badass little slice.

Mountain Mods Cases are an option however due to their size and dimensions you are going to have to come up with another way of mounting the phase change unit to the case.

agreed. mountainmods will make a perfect enclosure for just about any cooling (watercooling for sure). since you are contemplating which cooling solution to use i'll suggest checking the appropriate sections for those cooling solutions. in addition, if you don't get a mountainmods case, i see the PC-V1200 a lot in watercooling. it's got a partitioned bottom like the 2100 but it has two separated harddrive racks, one you can remove to include a water pump. TBH the cooling solution will probably be your hardest decision.

isn't loyalty worth anything anymore???

if you are loyal to just one company of the two major companies you only have a 50% chance of having the best hardware. i don't give a damn who makes the best, i just want the best. many here feel the same way. brand loyalty (aka fanboy-ism) is something i frown upon, and many others do as well, as it is closed minded and limits your potential in your system.

and scsi is generally something you will want to leave out of home PC systems. for one, it is too costly. you are looking at something like a 100% increase in your price of storage solutions by going with scsi. second, if you go with a SATA raid you have the option of upgrading to a SAS controller card later and you can still connect half duplex SATA drives to the SAS controller and upgrade the drives as you see fit. third, you will never really use the performance potential of a SATA raid anyway so there is no reason for a little more performance for 200% of the cost.

next year, SAS will be the way to go. if you haven't looked it up yet, take a look.

feel free to ask more questions. hope we've helped a bit.

-cheese

 

[Electron Chaser]

i'm curious as to why you are switching to AM2. you couldn't choose a worse time to make the switch lol. have you seen initial performance comparisons of AM2 and Conroe on Tom's Hardware and Anandtech? check those out. Conroe is one badass little slice.

-cheese

I went back and revisited the sites looks like Intel is finally getting off their ***. About damn time too. Well I have a few months yet till I upgrade I will give both a look again at that time and pick the best at that time. Though I will add that since both chips haven't been released yet and there is a lot of marketing hype going on. I will wait until the production chips start to roll out and see what numbers are being posted then.

 

[Steamroller]

ok. Sata sounds like some sound advice. and I will be doing some research on sas now. as far as the loyalty thing, I love ATI...I have never ben letdown by them ever. Did the whole gforce thing a few times and the quality of display is not as good. Colors always seem richer with ati. OCZ has always put out good ram, as well as the very stable Mushkin ... what is the most saught after quality in ram for overclocking?? I slatency everything or does the voltage matter lkike in a cpu?

 

[moonlightcheese]

ok. Sata sounds like some sound advice. and I will be doing some research on sas now. as far as the loyalty thing, I love ATI...I have never ben letdown by them ever. Did the whole gforce thing a few times and the quality of display is not as good. Colors always seem richer with ati. OCZ has always put out good ram, as well as the very stable Mushkin ... what is the most saught after quality in ram for overclocking?? I slatency everything or does the voltage matter lkike in a cpu?

with the new Conroe chip, latency won't matter nearly as much as the branch prediction is nearly 100% perfect (instruction level parallelism is near retirement) and the information will almost always be there when the CPU needs it. DDR2 has a long way to go before it matures into a fast solution with more tangible benefits over DDR. the latest is the new DDR2 from OCZ which can acheive 4-5-4-15 (or something like that) at 1.1k. that's some crazy bandwidth at that latency. it'll get much better by the time you are ready to purchase though, so without stating anything about specific models, some good brands are OCZ, Mushkin is pretty good, GeIL, and many others. too many to list. i suggest hanging out in the memory section to learn more on brand names here. personally i prefer the three mentioned above.

 

[Steamroller]

Omg this is getting to be too damn funny. If you have a second check this out on toms hardware. http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/lifetime-opportunity-12-000-budget-Mas-200-ftopict180721.html

 

[ƒÓÒl]

If I had that moolah to blow, I'd be seriously tempted by Tyan's quad AMD board with 4 FX62 dualcore processors and 8-16 Gig of ECC registered Corsair ram.

Of course a humongous server board like that would rule out both the case you'd like, and off the shelf phase change cooling, but dang what a machine.
You'd probably also have to run server 2003 because of multiple 64 bit processors.

I try to stay away from Tom's normally...I just can't seem to take them seriously anymore due to their long history of foolishness and "thumb on the scale" reviews.
I'll check out that link later though.

Welcome to the forums, m8!

 

[ghettocomp]

Omg this is getting to be too damn funny. If you have a second check this out on toms hardware. http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/lifetime-opportunity-12-000-budget-Mas-200-ftopict180721.html

Those folks are further proof why OCF is the one place I will stay. $12000? wow!
I would have thought I died and am in modding heaven. That is a lot of change
to build the "right" computer! I envy you man...

 

[oxid]

Phew, and I tought I was lucky with my 800 euro budget for EVERYTHING in x-mas
But you can do some really cool stuff with 12K..

First of all I would get a solid state disk. Buy a 32GB flash HD for your OS, don't put your page file on it, flash has a limited write lifetime.
Spend as much as you want on storage from regular hard drives, but get one of those 800 dollar RAID controllers. Dedicated processors all the way! Also, if you want REAL overkill, get 10 gigabit ethernet

As for processors, get a good quality workstation SLI mobo with two sockets for two dual core woodcrest (conroe for server), or two dual core K8L. That gives four cores, that's more then enough. Performance of SMP doesn't scale regularly. To get double the performance of quad core you need 12 core or something, not 8 core.
Just get best SLI/Quad-SLI/X-fire money can buy.
Next up, try FB-DIMMS if they get released at the end of the year. They are very good for large amounts of memory, try to get at least 16 GB of RAM xD.

As for a monitor, try one of those 24 inch widescreen CRT's. For gaming and video editing, LCD is not yet so good. CRT all the way. Type in froogle : GDM-FW900.
For speakers, get a reciever (or what was that called again?) and buy some overkill speakers. But, since you have kids, I wouldn't overdo it there since I imagine most of the time you're gaming is when the kids are asleep. Headphones are a good idea.

Get that optimus OLED keyboard for 400 bucks... should be released by the end of the year.
For the sake of simplicity I would consider overkill WC.
An Iwaki and A HUGE car rad should do the job. And if you want subzero on the CPU/GPU, get a TEC.
That way you can fit everything INSIDE the case, and you can transport it where ever you like.

Also, try to get some BIG blowers. And I don't mean things you find on videocards, I mean 700CFM monsters of blistering DOOM. Can't help you on where to get them tho, try ebay.

And why not replace the aluminium crap on your case with a more noble material like titanium?
Aluminium is the most abundant element in the earth's crust, is the most cheap metal there is... Buy some titanium sheets, carbon fibre, or anything that floats your boat.

But, whatever it is you're getting, HAVE FUN dude

 

[moonlightcheese]

@oxid :roflmao:

 

[oxid]

what? I'm sure that's possible with 12K ...

 

[moonlightcheese]

First of all I would get a solid state disk. Buy a 32GB flash HD for your OS, don't put your page file on it, flash has a limited write lifetime.

which is exactly why you shouldn't buy one for your OS.

Spend as much as you want on storage from regular hard drives, but get one of those 800 dollar RAID controllers. Dedicated processors all the way! Also, if you want REAL overkill, get 10 gigabit ethernet

is OC192 even available to the consumer market? lol. and why buy a RAID controller when they are built into most mobos?

As for processors, get a good quality workstation SLI mobo with two sockets for two dual core woodcrest (conroe for server), or two dual core K8L. That gives four cores, that's more then enough. Performance of SMP doesn't scale regularly. To get double the performance of quad core you need 12 core or something, not 8 core.

lmao. that's funny. it's a home desktop, not an ICANN root server lol. can we say idle?

Just get best SLI/Quad-SLI/X-fire money can buy.
Next up, try FB-DIMMS if they get released at the end of the year. They are very good for large amounts of memory, try to get at least 16 GB of RAM xD.

not only are FB-DIMMs slower than DDR2, they also run hotter. geez... you're trying to make a $20K furnace lol.

As for a monitor, try one of those 24 inch widescreen CRT's. For gaming and video editing, LCD is not yet so good. CRT all the way. Type in froogle : GDM-FW900.

there are plenty of LCDs that are equal in quality to CRTs. also, LCDs do not rely on old "flicker" technology and are therefore better on the eyes. in fact, Dell just released a 30" wide screen flat panel that almost made me jizz... it requires Dual-Link DVI LOL.

For speakers, get a reciever (or what was that called again?) and buy some overkill speakers. But, since you have kids, I wouldn't overdo it there since I imagine most of the time you're gaming is when the kids are asleep. Headphones are a good idea.

can we say BOOM!? lol. that would be so badass and probably bust some budget lol.

Get that optimus OLED keyboard for 400 bucks... should be released by the end of the year.

oh of course... i'll pay 400 dollars for something i'll replace in a year or two lol.

For the sake of simplicity I would consider overkill WC.
An Iwaki and A HUGE car rad should do the job. And if you want subzero on the CPU/GPU, get a TEC.
That way you can fit everything INSIDE the case, and you can transport it where ever you like.

nothing too bad about that.

Also, try to get some BIG blowers. And I don't mean things you find on videocards, I mean 700CFM monsters of blistering DOOM. Can't help you on where to get them tho, try ebay.

cuz i want my computer to sound like an airport LOL.

And why not replace the aluminium crap on your case with a more noble material like titanium?

cuz that's probably $1000 worth of custom metal forging and material lol.

Aluminium is the most abundant element in the earth's crust, is the most cheap metal there is... Buy some titanium sheets, carbon fibre, or anything that floats your boat.

alu is also cheap, reliable and lightweight, not to mention alu cases are widely available... why would i want a computer made from space shuttle material? will it give me a better OC? survey says no lol.

But, whatever it is you're getting, HAVE FUN dude

the important bit lol.

 

[oxid]

oxid got pwnt ='(

which is exactly why you shouldn't buy one for your OS.

The OS doesn't write SO much does it? How long would it take to fill up 2 million writes?

is OC192 even available to the consumer market? lol. and why buy a RAID controller when they are built into most mobos?

I suggested a RAID controller because a good RAID controller boosts performance, and I don't know about 10 gigabit ethernet, that was a remote hope that it would be at the end of the year.

lmao. that's funny. it's a home desktop, not an ICANN root server lol. can we say idle?

As for the four cores, intel and AMD are all planning quad core for the desktop environment, why not take a step ahead?

not only are FB-DIMMs slower than DDR2, they also run hotter. geez... you're trying to make a $20K furnace lol.

Aren't FBDIMMS faster in high amounts of memory? I knew that in "conservative" amounts of memory, ie 2, 4 GB, DDR2 outperforms it, but when the amount of memory increases, FBDIMM gets better?

there are plenty of LCDs that are equal in quality to CRTs. also, LCDs do not rely on old "flicker" technology and are therefore better on the eyes. in fact, Dell just released a 30" wide screen flat panel that almost made me jizz... it requires Dual-Link DVI LOL.

And it's true that LCD's have gotten much better, but for video editing, CRT's can't be matched yet.
and that CRT I suggested can handle 1920x1200 @ 85 Hz, 85 Hz is very good. I get more headache by staring at a LCD where I can't adjust the backlight then looking at a 85 Hz CRT.

can we say BOOM!? lol. that would be so badass and probably bust some budget lol.

Yeah, eventually I suggested headphones

oh of course... i'll pay 400 dollars for something i'll replace in a year or two lol.

The computer itself would be outdated in two years anyway, why break down only the keyboard?

cuz i want my computer to sound like an airport LOL.

depends on how much voltage you feed them...

cuz that's probably $1000 worth of custom metal forging and material lol.

alu is also cheap, reliable and lightweight, not to mention alu cases are widely available... why would i want a computer made from space shuttle material? will it give me a better OC? survey says no lol.

And steam said he wanted a very nice case, so why not spend some extra money on nice materials?

the important bit lol.

Yeah, the bottom line.