Computer parts questions

I'm looking for some info/advice for the following:

1. If I'm not doing any gaming, is there any advantage with going with this case:

http://www.newegg.ca …aspx?Item=N82E1​6811129021

versus this one:

http://www.newegg.ca …aspx?Item=N82E1​6811129066


2. For a X58D-E MOBO with I7 930 what specs should I be looking for in a video card?

PCI-E 2.1x16 or PCI-E 2.0?
1GB DDR3 RAM?
Any other consideration?

Also, which brand is the most reliable: Asus, Saphire, Gigabyte or HIS? And some cards have (Cedar) after the words Radeon HD5450. Is this a better GPU?


3. For WD internal hard drives what's the difference between Caviar Blue and Black? Also, some say " - bare drive" after the name of the drive and some don't ... what's the difference?


4. Some of the SSD drives have "- OEM" after the name of the drive. Does this mean they are for OEM system builders only?

Also, which is the better manufacturer for SSD's: Intel, Kingston, Imation, Crucial or Corsair?


5. What's the main difference between the following memory modules?

http://www.newegg.ca …aspx?Item=N82E1​6820104116
http://www.newegg.ca …aspx?Item=N82E1​6820104131

I assume both will work. Is this correct?

I have the 900 and really like it. The big difference between the two is air flow. Large heat sinks, water coolers, and long video cards really cramp smaller cases like the 300. I have two video cards, both pretty long and thick along with an after market heat sink. I also have six HDD's eSATA PCI card and my motherboard has bridge coolers... It would all probably fit in the 300, but it would be super tight. Also, working inside the 900 is a dream. No pinching, scraping or fussing with wires. It just fits.

Blue drives are slower, have less cache and are considered mass consumer. Green drives are power conserving and should be only be used for backup. Black's are faster, have more cache and are considered higher performance. Get a Black

OEM products are brown box items that companies like Newegg, Dell and HP buy in bulk. They don't come with all the nifty packaging and sometimes lack software, hardware and/or screws. OEM is most often cheaper due to this. OEM products are fine.

No clue who makes the best ones, but when in doubt get the big names like Intel. Crucial and Corsair would be my second choice since that's what they do - make memory

The memory for $172 is slightly faster. You'd probably never see the difference though, but for some people, they have to have every tiny bit of performance. If you plan on overclocking, the $172 memory would be the way to go... Though I would probably go with Crucial, Corsair or G.Skill, but that's just a personal choice.

1. The three hundred is more than adequate unless you plan to jam it full of parts. For a couple hard drives and a single video card you'll be fine.

2. For photo editing any card will do, but if you are using CS4 or CS5 you;ll want to find one that is OpenGl compatible. Any of the 5450s should do fine.

3. If you are using the drive for storage and not an OS drive get the green drive. Otherwise buy the black.

4. For SSD look at Intel or OCZ. Read the reviews on the Egg and over at Anandtech.

5. You can go cheaper than that for the RAM. Something like this GSkill will do fine.
http://www.newegg.ca …aspx?Item=N82E1​6820231223

A good case is a good case whether you use it for gaming or not...but you probably won't need a ton of drive bays unless you intend on using lots of internal drives, like for RAID or something.

Caviar Black I think is intended for more performance."Bare drive" just means it doesn't come in a retail box.

The best SSDs are "Indilinx" or Intel...which, for the most part, means you buy either OCZ (Indilinx) or Intel.

The difference in the RAM you posted is in the latency. The more expensive one is 8-8-8-24 (ms), the other is 9-9-9-27. The real-world difference is zero, so get the cheaper one. They both have heatspreaders, so I don't think any particular one is more suited to overclocking...

Thanks MaxxuM, In2Photos and toxic. This should really help me finalize my parts list

Bigger fans spin slower for the same cooling, so they're quieter. That'd be a big bonus for me.

tim wrote in post #10863267
Bigger fans spin slower for the same cooling, so they're quieter. That'd be a big bonus for me.

Good point Tim. That 200mm fan would be nice.

Bob_A wrote in post #10860977
3. For WD internal hard drives what's the difference between Caviar Blue and Black? Also, some say " - bare drive" after the name of the drive and some don't ... what's the difference?

I have 2 green and 2 black drives, 1 of each internal and external.
I honestly don't notice any performance difference, although the green internal drive doesn't like waking from sleep mode.
Apparently it's a known problem with the firmware.

I also have a pair of Seagate drives internally. The idea was to spread the load around to try and minimize the chance of getting a bad batch of drives etc and reduce the chance of a failure effecting more than 1 drive.

Moppie wrote in post #10863517
I have 2 green and 2 black drives, 1 of each internal and external.
I honestly don't notice any performance difference, although the green internal drive doesn't like waking from sleep mode.
Apparently it's a known problem with the firmware.

I also have a pair of Seagate drives internally. The idea was to spread the load around to try and minimize the chance of getting a bad batch of drives etc and reduce the chance of a failure effecting more than 1 drive.

Thanks Moppie, based on all the comments I'll get the black.

Well I got all my parts and put the thing together. I can't believe it but the thing worked perfectly from the time I first powered it up (that's a first for me ).

One question: I bought some Molex to three pin adapter cables so I could plug a couple of the fans in the Antek case onto the motherboard. I'm able to manually switch the fans from low speed (silent) high speed (disabled) through the Asus Fan Xpert software that came with my motherboard, but I'm not certain if they will actually ramp up or down to keep the motherboard cool since there is no rpm reading. Are they going to be fixed speed or is the software smart enough to ramp based on power?

The parts that you have are close to systems I put together recently. The following is what I used for a template.
DX58SO
I7-930
Antec 900 case
Antec Earthwatts 650 watt power supply
Saphire HD5750
6 GB of OCZ DDR3
Seagate 1.5 TB Barracuda drive (5900RPM)

I am very happy with the machine. The fans in the Antec case are extremely quiet and move a reasonable amount of air to keep things cool. Depending on what you are going to do, the only minor issue was the 5900RPM hard drive. I should have studied a little harder and picked a 7200 RPM drive. The video card I picked is overkill for most of what I am doing, but If I start working with CAD tools again, it will get put to work. I an not a gamer, but I work with CAD software and photo editing software. I have no issues about performance of the machine.

Hope this helps,

110yd

110yd wrote in post #10953501
The parts that you have are close to systems I put together recently. The following is what I used for a template.
DX58SO
I7-930
Antec 900 case
Antec Earthwatts 650 watt power supply
Saphire HD5750
6 GB of OCZ DDR3
Seagate 1.5 TB Barracuda drive (5900RPM)

I am very happy with the machine. The fans in the Antec case are extremely quiet and move a reasonable amount of air to keep things cool. Depending on what you are going to do, the only minor issue was the 5900RPM hard drive. I should have studied a little harder and picked a 7200 RPM drive. The video card I picked is overkill for most of what I am doing, but If I start working with CAD tools again, it will get put to work. I an not a gamer, but I work with CAD software and photo editing software. I have no issues about performance of the machine.

Hope this helps,

110yd

Agree, my machine is also very fast and while the video card I chose certainly isn't for gaming it will be very good for everything else (including CAD).

I went with:

Antec Three Hundred Illusion Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case (half the price of the 900 and still way overkill for what I do. also looks better IMO)
i7 930 Processor
Corsair VX 550W Power Supply w/ 120mm Fan
ASUS P6X58D-E LGA MOBO
Kingston HyperX 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model KHX1600C9D3K3/6GX
Intel X25-M Mainstream 34nm 2.5in SATA II Solid State Drive, 160GB
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1501FASS 1.5TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
ASUS Radeon EAH5450 Silent 1GB DDR3 Video Card
ASUS DRW-24B1ST SATA 24X DVD Burner
D-Link DWA-552 32-bit PCI Xtreme Desktop Adapter
ASUS USB-BT21 USB 2.0 Mini Bluetooth Dongle
Rosewill RCR-IC001 40-in-1 USB 2.0 3.5" Internal Card Reader w/ USB port
3.5" to 5.25" drive bay adapter for the card reader
Windows 7 Home Premium English

Absolutely everything worked perfectly first time. And Win 7 loaded 100% of the proper drivers right from the start, so I didn't need to do any troubleshooting and just needed to do updates.


Even though with 4 case fans running on low everything stays cool I'm going to tinker a bit and get a couple of variable speed case fans to connect to the MB. It's not a necessary thing, but I used this as a project with my daughters so it's another excuse to open the box up and show them something different I may also disconnect one of the fans to make it a bit quieter. 4 plus a CPU cooler is overkill for what I do.

Out of my entire build the only thing I'm not happy with is the noise from the WD Caviar Black hard drive. Reading on-line reports/reviews it's normal, but the thing sure clatters when it's being accessed. Fortunately I bought a 160GB SSD to load my OS and programs so the only time the WD drive is accessed is for data.