When to buy a new PC - any advantage to waiting?

Just remember, aluminum cases can and most often will rattle a little bit. You may have to monkey with padding them in certain places to keep them from making noise. I've had this issue with Lian Li's so they're not immune.

That being said, I always run Al cases because they have better heat rejection and are lighter to carry around. My main rig is built into a Lian Li full tower server case. Great air flow, tons of space and nice cable routing.

Totally correct Citizen_Insane... lian-li however, does do a good job on keeping the rattling to a minimum though. My case came with rubber fan gasket to keep the rattling at bay when the fans are running. Once you exerience the craftmanship of lian-li you'd never go to another case. Your hooked for life..

tim wrote in post #13142144
I'll go with the i7 2600K.

Do I need an aftermarket cooler, or is stock fine? Mounting CPUs, heatsinks, and fans is my least favourite part of assembling a PC.

I'm going to say yes to the aftermarket cooler.

The old Core 2 coolers were fantastic, but the newer Intel coolers have gotten very small.
The one on my Q6600 is easily twice the size as the one that came with my i7 2600.
Yes the i7 puts out less heat, but it also works harder.

With the stock cooler on my Q6600 temps got up to about 60 deg C. With the stock cooler on the i7, temps were reaching well into 70+ deg C.

So I put a simple V6 cooler on it, and temps are now around 40deg C, even when working flat out.

Thanks for the thoughts guys. I'll probably go for good cooler and a Lian Li case. I might even go for a full tower, I have plenty of space, and good airflow and plenty of big fans means it'll be quiet.

Re motherboard, Moppy said P67 chipset, Nathan said Z68. I haven't done any research, anyone know the difference?

tim wrote in post #13147033
Thanks for the thoughts guys. I'll probably go for good cooler and a Lian Li case. I might even go for a full tower, I have plenty of space, and good airflow and plenty of big fans means it'll be quiet.

Re motherboard, Moppy said P67 chipset, Nathan said Z68. I haven't done any research, anyone know the difference?

The Z68 lets you use the on board graphics and still over clock.
The on board graphics does somethings for video rendering that speeds it up, but all the reviews I've seen seem to think it's really not that big a deal and the P67 set up is more stable as it doesn't have to cope with graphics switching if your running a separate card as well.

I want a separate graphics card, so I can have plenty of dedicated video ram, so I guess P67 would be the better choice for me. Thanks Moppie.

what i like about the z68 is the new SSD caching support. Allows you to use the speed of the SSD for all the caching and leave the regular disks for just storage.. Basicly you can turn your massive 2TB drive into the speed of a SAS velociraptor. It also supports quicksync which is really not very important to everyone except video users.

I just read up on SSD caching. I don't really see much benefit for what I do, which is batch process many GB of data. I'd want to see real world data before I bother with it. I put data onto appropriate storage tiers. Plus hard drives are actually pretty fast at returning large files, it's just seeks that are slow on spinning disks.

tim wrote in post #13142144
Do I need an aftermarket cooler, or is stock fine? Mounting CPUs, heatsinks, and fans is my least favourite part of assembling a PC.

Corsair H60

tim wrote in post #13142144
Motherboard: I had a faulty Gigabyte motherboard once so haven't used them since, I like Asus, but anything that's good quality, good value, and that makes overclocking easy would be good. I may or may not overclock, if I do it'll only be a very mild overclock. Reliability is more important than speed.

MSI P67A-C45

tim wrote in post #13142144
Next is which RAM. I read up on it, the RAM speed makes little difference. I don't need 2333MHz RAM, 1600MHz is fine, even 1333MHz is really not much slower in real world benchmarks. 1600MHz seems to be the sweet spot. I don't need the biggest, fastest RAM with big heatsinks, basic is fine. I looked at the RAM compatibility list for a couple of motherboards, it's really hard to correlate between the PDF files and the online store, but either the RAM I liked isn't on the list, or RAM on the list isn't in the store. There are very few 16GB RAM configurations too - I figure RAM's cheap, might as well load up on it now so I have matching RAM. I want something that's definitely going to work.

Corsair DDR3 Vengeance Jet Black, PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC, CAS 9-9-9-24, XMP, 1.50V

tim wrote in post #13142144
Next, video card. I don't game, ever. I chose a random 450 card with 1GB RAM. If I could find a card with more RAM i'd get it, one of my culling tools uses as much video ram as you'll give it.

really? what is it?

tim wrote in post #13142144
The case is important. I want something discrete, probably black, but really quiet and with spaces for large fans. USB 3.0 and eSata are important. I have three hard drives plus two SSDs, one optical drive. If it doesn't come with a decent power supply i'll buy a good brand modular power supply.

http://www.silverstone​tek.com …ex.php?model=RV​02&area=en

Bobster wrote in post #13160327
Corsair H60
MSI P67A-C45
Corsair DDR3 Vengeance Jet Black, PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC, CAS 9-9-9-24, XMP, 1.50V
really? what is it?

http://www.silverstone​tek.com …ex.php?model=RV​02&area=en

Thanks for the suggestions Bob, but none of those parts are available in the store I use, and maybe not in NZ. We seem to be a revision or two behind, and even those aren't always in stock.

Tim,


I7 2600:
http://www.ascent.co.n​z …cation.aspx?Ite​mID=393286

Gigabyte Board:
http://www.ascent.co.n​z …cation.aspx?Ite​mID=397644

8GB of RAM:
http://www.ascent.co.n​z …cation.aspx?Ite​mID=397946

If you spend about $100 on a CPU cooler you will get something more than capable.
It doens't need to be fancy, mine is a basic one: http://www.pbtech.co.n​z …oler-Universal-For-All-So
And it is more than capable.

Thanks Moppie. That exact RAM model isn't on the compatibility list, but the part number is very very similar to memory that is on the list.

I think i'm going to go for 16GB of RAM, just because it's so cheap, and to avoid incompatibilities if I want more RAM later. Do you think this one would work? Again it's similar to what's on the hardware list, but not exactly. There's nothing from the HCL that's in stock at ascent.

Any ideas about Graphics cards? I was thinking the Asus 450 card, or the Gigabyte version with DD3 or DDR5.

I currently drive the 2-3 year old 40" 720p Samsung LCD TV in my office with VGA, as it works better than with DVI-HDMI, on my old 6800 video card. I wonder if HDMI would work better with a newer computer. The Gigabyte video cards don't have VGA. A quiet card is important to me - my current card is fanless, though it gets pretty hot even just using windows and Photoshop.

Toms Hardware recommend the ATI 5770/6770 video cards as best value at the price point I want to go for. I've never had ATI cards, i've always used nVidia.

Ascent (the supplier) say that RAM should be fine with that Motherboard. It's only 1333MHz, which is 2-4% slower than 1600 RAM in real world tests, but I doubt that matters.

Graphics card, case, and cooler to go. I want a cooler that's easy to fit and won't come off. My current one attaches the fan to the heatsink with some annoying rubber lugs that keep falling off, they're really annoying.

tim wrote in post #13161487
I currently drive the 2-3 year old 40" 720p Samsung LCD TV in my office with VGA, as it works better than with DVI-HDMI, on my old 6800 video card. I wonder if HDMI would work better with a newer computer. The Gigabyte video cards don't have VGA. A quiet card is important to me - my current card is fanless, though it gets pretty hot even just using windows and Photoshop.

Toms Hardware recommend the ATI 5770/6770 video cards as best value at the price point I want to go for. I've never had ATI cards, i've always used nVidia.

I had used nVidia cards in the past until my latest/present PC, i7-860 with ATI 5450...a very entry level vid card running my Viewsonic VP2365wb via DVI and my 50" Samsung HDTV via HDMI...calibrating the Sammy is a real trick, with all the calibration settings in it to deal with it.

I've read that Adobe is 'programmed' for nVidia (or vice versa) which is supposedly better for Photoshop than ATI...nonetheless I've found the ATI software (Catalyst Control Center) works fine for basic calibration (individual display calibration plus desktop properties calibration that affects both) .... but I've not done much of any printing with this PC nor affixed any color/display profile to PS...still both displays look good to my eye...

I guess i'll stick with nVidia then.

My PS3 connects to the 50" Samsung LCD via a receiver, both with HDMI, it looks great. From memory the PS3 on the older 40" LCD didn't look so good, but i'll try it again some time. Maybe I do need to stick with VGA on the older TV.