Sweet spot system

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Ashex
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Sweet spot system

Post by Ashex » Sun Dec 09, 2007 11:59 am

I've been poking around a few sites and forums. One one of them I give out advice on building out computers (I try to make them choose silent parts :wink: ). After doing this for awhile, I decided to take everything I've learned so far and just price out a system, both an Intel one and an AMD one.


Case: Antec P182 $109.99

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 $189.99

CPU Heatsink: Scythe Ninja $39.99

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L $96.99

RAM: Geil 2x1GB DDR2 800 $49.99

Video Card: EVGA 8800GT $289.99

Video Card Cooler: Accelero S1 $23.99

Power Supply: Seasonic 500W Modular $129.99 (Although I'd be just as happy with a 430W, but newegg doesn't offer modular at that wattage)

Hard Drives:
Western Digital Caviar SE16 750GB $149.99
Seagate 7200.1 100GB 2.5" Hard Drive $109.99

Case Fans: Scythe SY1225SL12L 120mm Case Fan $8.99 (3 of these with one ducted to the heatsink) Alt link

DVD-Burner: Pioneer DVR-112D $29.99

Total: 1247.86


For the AMD system, I'd just swap out the board and CPU

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-M57SLI-S4 $89.99

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Brisbane 2.6GHz Black Edition $129.99

Which would bring it to:

AMD Total: 1180.86

mattthemuppet
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Post by mattthemuppet » Sun Dec 09, 2007 8:36 pm

hmm, looks pretty good. For personal preferences I'd go for a E4500 or similar and clock it up to what ever level you need - the extra cache of the E6750 isn't going to make a huge difference and the higher multiplier of the E4xxx chips means you'll have a lower idle speed and power draw.

8800GT - hmm, powerful card, but if you're not running a huge screen and/or Crysis, a ATI 3850 will cost less and draw considerably less power at idle but still give 80%+ of the performance.

PSU - your rig'll draw at most 200W fully loaded and more efficient PSUs have come out since that Seasonic one was introduced, so it might be worth looking at other PSUs - there are efficient modular PSUs that would fit but I can't bring them to mind right now.

HDD - I'm guessing the laptop drive is for system and the WD SE16 is for storage, set to swtich off when not in use? Might be worth jumping for a single WD GP or Samsung F1 drive. Cost less, give more space and probably would use similar amount of power. Either way, power savings on HDDs are pretty minimal compared to running a mid to high end gaming card!

Wouldn't personally bother looking into an AMD sweetspot system right now - Intel has that area covered far better in performance and power draw (HTPC systems with IGP, now that's something different!).

All just IMO - what you've listed would make a fantastic PC, there are just a few areas that could be tweaked depending on money and priorities :)

Cerb
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Post by Cerb » Mon Dec 10, 2007 5:40 am

With a $600 budget, or very low power but high quality requirements (690G and Geforce IGP boards), consider AMD. If $1250 isn't too much, it's $70 well spent over the AMD system's price.

You may or may not want to add TR's bolt-through, too.

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Post by NeilBlanchard » Mon Dec 10, 2007 9:54 am

Hello,

My personal "sweet spot" system would replace the P182 with a Solo, and the 500watt PSU with a 300watt Fortron Source "Green" unit. This would be functionally identical, and it would save $124. :wink:

Ashex
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Post by Ashex » Mon Dec 10, 2007 1:57 pm

mattthemuppet wrote:hmm, looks pretty good. For personal preferences I'd go for a E4500 or similar and clock it up to what ever level you need - the extra cache of the E6750 isn't going to make a huge difference and the higher multiplier of the E4xxx chips means you'll have a lower idle speed and power draw.
Good call on the E4xxx series, I'll look into them and see if that would work better, which it sounds like it may. I' haven't been paying much attention to Intel procs until recently (when I had to start recommending them over amd procs), so I'm a bit naive on the difference in them.
8800GT - hmm, powerful card, but if you're not running a huge screen and/or Crysis, a ATI 3850 will cost less and draw considerably less power at idle but still give 80%+ of the performance.
I would have picked an ATI card, but I dual-boot with linux (windows is for gaming and image editing), and currently ATI doesn't have the best driver support, but with the release of the source, I may just change my mind.
PSU - your rig'll draw at most 200W fully loaded and more efficient PSUs have come out since that Seasonic one was introduced, so it might be worth looking at other PSUs - there are efficient modular PSUs that would fit but I can't bring them to mind right now.
I would rather go with a lower wattage, and I know Seasonic makes almost silent PSU's, so I went with them. Otherwise I'd have picked a Antec Neo-HE 380, I have the 500W model and it works great. If you know of other efficient modular psu's that are in the 380W range, let me know :)
HDD - I'm guessing the laptop drive is for system and the WD SE16 is for storage, set to swtich off when not in use? Might be worth jumping for a single WD GP or Samsung F1 drive. Cost less, give more space and probably would use similar amount of power. Either way, power savings on HDDs are pretty minimal compared to running a mid to high end gaming card!
The two hard drives is both for energy efficiency and performance. In my experience the system runs much faster when the system is spread across more then one disk. And I don't see myself exceeding 750GB for awhile so it would work great for me (I have a 320GB disk for my home directory that I've barely filled halfway and I've had it for a year)
Wouldn't personally bother looking into an AMD sweetspot system right now - Intel has that area covered far better in performance and power draw (HTPC systems with IGP, now that's something different!).
That's a good point, I was just putting it out there for people who want to build an AMD system. These are just the parts that I have found to be the best for the price.
All just IMO - what you've listed would make a fantastic PC, there are just a few areas that could be tweaked depending on money and priorities :)
Please let me know what you would change, This is going to be something along the lines of the PC I'll be building in the summer.
Cerb wrote: With a $600 budget, or very low power but high quality requirements (690G and Geforce IGP boards), consider AMD. If $1250 isn't too much, it's $70 well spent over the AMD system's price.

You may or may not want to add TR's bolt-through, too.
I was shooting for keeping it under 1,000, so I'm going to do some more reading on boards, and good call on the bolt-through kit, I completely forgot about it >.<
NeilBlanchard wrote:My personal "sweet spot" system would replace the P182 with a Solo, and the 500watt PSU with a 300watt Fortron Source "Green" unit. This would be functionally identical, and it would save $124.
I like the Solo, but I've been hooked on the P182 for awhile, I imagine I'd use the Solo case for friends who ask me to build them a system, and The Fortron power supply lacks a PCIE connector :/

nick705
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Re: Sweet spot system

Post by nick705 » Mon Dec 10, 2007 4:38 pm

Ashex wrote: Power Supply: Seasonic 500W Modular $129.99 (Although I'd be just as happy with a 430W, but newegg doesn't offer modular at that wattage)
It's just my opinion, but I reckon a modular PSU can actually be a disadvantage in a P182, because of the cramped and fiddly lower chamber - if you use it as intended and only install the power cables you need during the initial build, it can be a royal pain in the proverbial if you need to plug in additional ones later to feed extra devices, especially if (like me) you have big hands and aren't exactly nimble-fingered at the best of times.

I actually ended up leaving a couple of spare cables plugged into my (modular) Corsair HX-520, just in case I want to install extra drives or whatever at a later date - there's plenty of room behind the P182's motherboard tray to coil them up out of the way, and I'm pretty sure it will avoid a good deal of sweating and cursing...

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Post by mattthemuppet » Mon Dec 10, 2007 9:15 pm

I'd probably go with a Solo for the case, E4600 (or 4500) for the CPU and overclock it as and when you need to, Scythe Minja or whatever Thermalright EXXXtreme Ultra etc is top of the pile, a 3850 (plus S1) for graphics, a single Samsung F1 320GB drive (you could get 2, but I don't need that much space) and if I was really nuts, a PicoPSU with a 200W brick. Might be worth checking power consumption at the wall first though :)

that'd be what I'd get if I had the money!

Might be worth checking out the Abit IP35-E too, looks pretty well kitted out and so far slightly cheaper than the P35-DS3 boards.

Ashex
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Post by Ashex » Mon Dec 10, 2007 9:37 pm

mattthemuppet wrote:I'd probably go with a Solo for the case, E4600 (or 4500) for the CPU and overclock it as and when you need to, Scythe Minja or whatever Thermalright EXXXtreme Ultra etc is top of the pile, a 3850 (plus S1) for graphics, a single Samsung F1 320GB drive (you could get 2, but I don't need that much space) and if I was really nuts, a PicoPSU with a 200W brick. Might be worth checking power consumption at the wall first though :)

that'd be what I'd get if I had the money!

Might be worth checking out the Abit IP35-E too, looks pretty well kitted out and so far slightly cheaper than the P35-DS3 boards.
I was going to check out the IP35-E too, but apparently it has an issue with "Double booting". I'm not sure if it's a bios issue or bad hardware design, so I'm waiting on that one until it's resolved.

Judging from what you guys said, I'll probably drop the modular power supply and go for an E4600. I've been using AMD for the past few years and I've never had luck overclocking it past a couple hundred megahertz, but it sounds like Intels really are a lot easier to overclock.

mattthemuppet
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Post by mattthemuppet » Tue Dec 11, 2007 8:49 pm

I'm not sure about the E4600, but I've heard plenty of people getting a simple overclock out of the E4500 at stock voltage by simply changing the FSB from 200 to 266MHz - which'll give you more or less the equivalent of a E6550 (or whatever's around 2.6GHz now), but with a nice low idle. The E4600 should be more of the same, hopefully!

Haven't read any reviews of the IP35-E yet, though Anandtech said they were currently testing one against the Gigabyte board you mentioned. Other than specific issues and on board peripherals, they all look a much of a muchness to me.

Tommy Jefferson
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Post by Tommy Jefferson » Fri Dec 14, 2007 6:48 am

NeilBlanchard wrote:the 500watt PSU with a 300watt Fortron Source "Green" unit. This would be functionally identical, and it would save $124.
When you say "functionally identical" do you mean it's just a re-branded Seasonic?

$35 is a nice price.

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Post by NeilBlanchard » Fri Dec 14, 2007 9:35 am

Hello Tommy,

Fortron Source is another large PSU maker, and they make their own units. :wink: By functionally identical, I mean that it work just as well -- but it is an OEM unit, without any bling. It has short-ish wires, so it would not work in a P180/2, but in a Solo it is fine. In a way, the fact that it is not modular is fine, since there is very little extra wires to have to hide away...

It is efficient and quiet and inexpensive, too. :twisted:

Tommy Jefferson
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Post by Tommy Jefferson » Fri Dec 14, 2007 9:38 am

Thanks Neil!

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