Review this build

[EarthDog]

^

But... I'm an Asus fanboy (not really; just not a fan of Creative Sound cards..) So.

Asus Xonar DX Is my suggestion. In the same price bracket as mentioned above.

That is also a great choice, however, no optical out. I wouldnt want to have a nice soundcard and an analog 1/8" jack to RCA to my receiver... but thats just me...

 

[Mjolnir]

That is also a great choice, however, no optical out. I wouldnt want to have a nice soundcard and an analog 1/8" jack to RCA to my receiver... but thats just me...

Fair point! Didn't even consider that. Depends on the OP's sound setup then! ^^

 

[greyclear@gmail]

I changed out the case to the antec. Sound system is just a Yamaha surround sound something you would use on your home tv but I use it on the computer instead. I can go another $150 I am allowing a 3k budget. I dont guess going with dual i7's is overkill? Crap if I stay here Ill end up buying more than I need

 

[EarthDog]

Dual i7's are useless for most.. I dont imagine you would need all that horsepower unless the VM's you run are active.

 

[Mjolnir]

Whilst having a high-budget is fantastic.. Why spend more than you need? I think 2K is a great budget. Drop the Asus Xonar STX I suggested to either EarthDog's sound card or the asus I suggested.

$1913. (before rebates and whatever shipping). With the Antec 1200 and either lower sound cards. I believe Yamaha are solid builders of sound equipment; so I would definitely say a nice sound card would definitely enhance your user experience!

 

[greyclear@gmail]

I am posting in it right now. Windows 7 is my host, Windows 7 is my guest. Also testing it on a server right now to, linux as the host and 7 as the guest. Just ripping apart windows 7 lately to do lite builds is something I been doing lately for people who have older computers. So when I am extracting the WIM file I have to wait a while on the current computer but yea I do a lot of VM stuff.

 

[Mjolnir]

What are your current system specs? For reference.

 

[greyclear@gmail]

AMD Phenom 8450
8 gigs of ram
Windows 7
9600GTX
250x2 Raid 0
Three external drives 1tb 2tb and 500 gig

So compare that to what I am looking at is like driving around a midsize car and upgrading to a cadillac

 

[EarthDog]

I am posting in it right now. Windows 7 is my host, Windows 7 is my guest. Also testing it on a server right now to, linux as the host and 7 as the guest. Just ripping apart windows 7 lately to do lite builds is something I been doing lately for people who have older computers. So when I am extracting the WIM file I have to wait a while on the current computer but yea I do a lot of VM stuff.

I more or less meant heavy activity not that they are up and occasionally stripping an OS.

If its a Caddy, its a CTS-V.

 

[Mjolnir]

AMD Phenom 8450
8 gigs of ram
Windows 7
9600GTX
250x2 Raid 0
Three external drives 1tb 2tb and 500 gig

So compare that to what I am looking at is like driving around a midsize car and upgrading to a cadillac

Yes. . That's an older Phenom too.. The 2600K will rip that to shreds lol.

I would then; say stick to the 2k. But; I don't know a lot about VM. So it's up to ED to comment/recommend on that .

 

[greyclear@gmail]

Ive had this over clocked up to 2.9 from 2.10 but kinda unstable on games amazing how far it will clock up to but yea slowness is getting the better of me

 

[EarthDog]

Confirm on intel site vt-d on the 2600k....

 

[Mjolnir]

Confirm on intel site vt-d on the 2600k....

http://ark.intel.com/products/52214/Intel-Core-i7-2600K-Processor-(8M-Cache-3_40-GHz)

Says no =(.

Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x) Yes
Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) No
Intel® Trusted Execution Technology No

 

[greyclear@gmail]

vt-x is fine be nice if it had vt-d but thatll do

 

[fundip]

for dust filters you can just put some 3m air conditioner filter foam between the fan and case. a large sheet costs like $3 on amazon and it works better than anything else.

 

[Mjolnir]

^ or forgo the hassle and get the antec 1200 .

 

[greyclear@gmail]

Subtotal: $2000.87
Tax: $0.00
Shipping and Handling: $11.51
Total Amount: $2012.38




Won't be here in three days I am sure but ordered

 

[Mjolnir]

What was your final list? . And Congrats!

 

[greyclear@gmail]

This is what I ended up with excuse the formatting just copy pasting my invoice

11-129-100 CASE ANTEC|TWELVE HUNDRED V3 RT 1 $149.99 $149.99
12-200-455 CABLE STARTECH| TX3SPLIT12 RT 1 $6.99 $6.99
13-131-760 MB ASUS|MAXIMUS IV EXTREME-Z Z68 R 1 $339.99 $339.99
Click Here To Protect Your Investment
14-121-429 VGA ASUS|ENGTX580 DCII/2DIS/1536MD5 1 $499.99 $499.99
Click Here To Protect Your Investment
17-151-088 PSU SEASONIC| X650 GOLD SS-650KM R 1 $139.99 $139.99
19-115-070 CPU INTEL|CORE I7 2600K 3.4G 8M R 1 $299.99 $299.99
Click Here To Protect Your Investment
20-167-050 SSD 120G|INTEL SSDSA2CW120G3K5 R 2 $169.99 $339.98
20-233-236 MEM 4Gx4|CORSAIR CMZ16GX3M4X1866C9R 1 $159.99 $159.99
27-106-289 DVD BURNER LITE-ON | IHAS124-04 % 1 $19.99 $19.99
Click Here To Protect Your Investment
35-103-099 CPU COOLER CM| RR-212E-20PK-R2 R 1 $34.99 $34.99
Click Here To Protect Your Investment
35-186-020 THERMAL COMPOUND AC|MX-2 R 1 $8.98 $8.98



Payment Summary:

Payment Term: MastercardSubtotal: $2000.87Tax: $0.00Shipping and Handling: $11.51Total Amount: $2012.38


All in all I will say that the board features are cool as hell a lot more control over power, settings, etc etc so it was worth it. The graphics card is a beast it covers over the top of my sata ports. If the case was any shorter on the inside it wouldnt have fit.

Inside the case you have your typical cords for power, led, usb but theres an actual USB connector like what do you use that for? Like something you would plug up a external device except its on the inside of the case

Right now I have it running trials on raid 0 setup with the two SSD drives. In the BIOS theres a setting for onboard devices it asks if you want Marvel onboard driver enabled (raid, ahci, ide, sata) or disabled I guess if you disable it goes over to intel instead? Not sure. I setup a 128k stripe and my speeds are not what I had expected. Crystal mark is not picking up the drives at all so HDtune is picking them up but only showing about 220/mb where as my raid 0 WD sata drives were running at 190 on a 64k stripe. going to try different drivers or diff stripes later doubt itll make a difference.

Access times are normal.

I could not get the BIOS to see the ssd drives in the 6gb slots (1 and 2) but it sees them in port 3 and 4?? makes no sense...

Oh and its quiet compared to my old clunker