System Builders

[John Reynolds]

I need to upgrade my x58-based system I've had since 2008. I've spec'd out parts, did a bit of research, added them to my Amazon or Newegg lists, but then a thought occurred to me out of the blue late last week, a very foreign thought. Why go to the bother of getting all these individual parts together and spend the time to build it, hoping one of the stick of RAM aren't bad, or the mobo isn't bad, etc., when I can just have it built? I haven't NOT built my own computers for 20 years now, so like I said very foreign thought. But I'm the sys admin on a AF network, so I spend 40 hours/week messing with systems, servers, switches, VTCs, printers, ad nauseum. I feel like I'm past that point in my life that I take any pride in building my own computer. Feels sorta weird, like a little mini-era has passed, because I definitely would never have considered this even a few years ago.

Anyways, as the thread title says I'm looking for feedback on various system builders. The big ones like Dell and HP I won't bother with, so give me comments on CyberPowerPC, Alienware, Falcon Northwest, etc. Right now I'm leaning toward the first one. I can build a i7 4820 system with 16GB, blah blah, a 22" screen for my kids to use with the old system, upgraded fans and a quiet case and PSU, etc. for $1300 after shipping and a 5% off rebate.

 

[John Reynolds]

*BASE_PRICE: [+1309]
BLUETOOTH: None
CAS: Thermaltake Urban S21 w/ USB 3.0 [-18]
CASUPGRADE: None
CD: LG 12X Internal Blu-ray Drive & DVDRW, 3D Playback Combo Drive (BLACK COLOR)
CD2: None
COOLANT: Standard Coolant
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-4770K 3.50 GHz 8MB Intel Smart Cache LGA1150 (All Venom OC Certified)
CS_FAN: Maximum Enermax 120MM Case Cooling Fans for selected case (Maximum Silent Operation) [+29] (1,000 RPM Black Color with No LED Enlobal Magnetic Barometric Bearing 17 dBA)
DOCKINGSTATION: None
ENGRAVING: None
FA_HDD: None
FAN: Corsair Hydro Series H60 High Performance Liquid Cooling System 120MM Radiator & Fan (Single Standard 120MM Fan)
FLASHMEDIA: None
FREEBIE_VC: None
HDD: 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 7200 RPM HDD [+2] (Single Drive)
HDD2: None
HEADSET: None
IUSB: Built-in USB 2.0 Ports
KEYBOARD: AZZA Multimedia USB Gaming Keyboard
MB_SRT: None
MEMORY: 16GB (8GBx2) DDR3/1600MHz Dual Channel Memory [+89] (Corsair or Major Brand)
MONITOR: 22" Widescreen 1920x1080 LG 22M34D-B 5ms LED Backlight, D-Sub, DVI-D & Analog RGB [+69]
MONITOR2: None
MONITOR3: None
MOTHERBOARD: GIGABYTE Z87-HD3 ATX w/ Ultra Durable 4 Plus, GbLAN, 2 PCIe x16 (1 Gen3, 1 Gen2), 2 PCIe x1, 2 PCI
MOUSE: AZZA Optical 1600dpi Gaming Mouse with Weight Adjustable Cartridge
NETWORK: Onboard Gigabit LAN Network
NOISEREDUCE1: Sound Absorbing Foam on Side, Top And Bottom panels [+29]
OS: None - FORMAT HARD DRIVE ONLY [-60]
OVERCLOCK: No Overclocking
POWERSUPPLY: 650 Watts - Corsair CSM Series CS650M 80 Plus Gold Certified Modular Ultra Quiet Power Supply [+37]
RUSH: Standard processing time: ship within 2 to 3 weeks
SERVICE: STANDARD WARRANTY: 3-YEAR [3 Year Labor, 1 Year Parts] LIMITED WARRANTY PLUS LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT
SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
SPEAKERS: Logitech S120 2.0 Stereo Speaker Set [+19] (Black Color)
TEMP: None
TUNING: None
TVRC: None
USBFLASH: None
USBHD: None
USBX: None
VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 1GB GDDR3 PCIe x16 Video Card [-244] (Major Brand Powered by NVIDIA)

Just bought the above for $1210. Actually just a bit less than if I'd bought everything myself and put it together. My GTX 770 will go into this system and the GT 610 will go into the old one to drive the 22" panel for the kids.

Edit: They wanted $120 for a Kingston 120GB SSD, so I bought a Samsung EVO for $89 on Amazon. I'll put the OS on that and move the swap to the 1TB WD along with my Steam library and other crap.

 

[Grall]

I see where you come from. Building a PC for me these days is basically just a shitload of stress and hassle, it's absolutely zero percent fun and possibly negative fun actually. However I am so god damn picky with my components I couldn't find something that completely fulfils all my demands, so I will continue from now on to build my own systems even though my experiences with Dell have been pretty good overall actually (although they don't support OCing at all of course...)

I would suggest not buying anything from Amazon at all, ever, because it's one of the scummiest, most evil companies this side of Ebay/Paypal. They treat their warehouse workers like a fucking slave labor underclass, while squeezing the working man on the delivery side as well, relying increasingly on self-employed delivery workers with extremely poor (or no) benefits, all while that shitbag Bezos walks around grinning like a creshire cat, being more pleased with himself than any decent person has sense to be. Of course, it helps with the grinning being a god damn billionaire.

Newegg seems okay. They at least help to fight patent trolls, which I think Amazon hasn't bothered with at all so far. It probably costs them less to settle. Newegg never settles.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I can't speak for us system builders, but why would you put the swap into a HDD?

 

[Mize]

I can't speak for us system builders, but why would you put the swap into a HDD?

SSD life

 

[Mize]

Re: building vs. buying, (re)building a system is kinda like an annual winter thing for me...I have too much free time owing to less outdoor cycling and I need some sort of hobby. It could be modifying GPUs with different HSF, upgrading components or even a new water loop. It's not for the outcome so much as for the project thing...crazy eh?

I still have a new motherboard I bought a while back that I have to install, but I'm either working, training or racing for the next few months...

 

[zed]

Building a PC for me these days is basically just a shitload of stress and hassle

OK I used to repair PC's back in the 90s for a job for a while but really I cant see whats so difficult. Its just attaching a few parts (not that many at all) together, its not like you have to solder stuff or anything. 15mins and you're done. OK perhaps if the case is very smallthen its an issue but with a normal PC I dont see what the issue can be evn for someone thats never done it before

 

[Grall]

SSD life

Overrated, really. Unless you actively try to wreck a SSD, you won't manage to, not in the useful lifespan of the device... According to some study, SSDs are roughly as reliable as HDDs overall (I don't have the source link anymore), so it's basically a wash from a reliability POV where you have the page file, whereas a SSD is much faster of course and generally draws much less power (than a 3.5" unit; some SSDs can draw as much as some 2.5" HDDs.)

...So you may as well put your pagefile on your SSD. I have a 480GB system SSD in my current rig; I'm never going to wear that thing out. I just let everything stay on it, temp folders, internet cache, and so on. CBA!

 

[Mize]

It all comes down to how much data writing you do per day and the size of the SSD relative to that number.

 

[Grall]

You have to write hugely to a SSD every day to wreck even a small one in less than say, five years' time. What are you doing with that drive to generate so much write action, video editing...?

 

[homerdog]

The performance benefits from an SSD and their incredible durability makes it a no brainer to use it for everything you can. By the time you do manage to kill it (if ever) a new one will be even cheaper, bigger, and faster.

TechReport is writing literally the most amount of data to their drives as possible for months on end and after nearing the 1PB mark there is some debate as to whether it's even worth their time to continue. It is clear that you will not kill a good SSD.

 

[Mize]

You have to write hugely to a SSD every day to wreck even a small one in less than say, five years' time. What are you doing with that drive to generate so much write action, video editing...?

Me?
Nothing. I'm just quoting the 3-years-ago wisdom about SSDs, especially first generation consumer SSDs. Today's are quite a bit better and better understood. I have three SSDs in my gaming rig and never had an issue with any of them.

I could imaging, however, a high-transaction-rate, SQL server killing off SSDs at an unacceptable rate.

 

[Davros]

I need to upgrade my x58-based system

I'd actually doubt that you do

 

[Davros]

I can't speak for us system builders, but why would you put the swap into a HDD?

I'd put a small one on a ram drive if you have over 8gb
yes i know a swap file in ram seems stupid, but some programs will crap out if they dont find a swap so its best to have one.

 

[Albuquerque]

I'd put a small one on a ram drive if you have over 8gb
yes i know a swap file in ram seems stupid, but some programs will crap out if they dont find a swap so its best to have one.

This sounds a bit familiar

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=58581 (Scroll a bit to find my post...)

 

[John Reynolds]

My attitude toward SSDs is definitely from 6 years ago when they were first hitting the market and no one was sure on their longevity. I looked up TechReport's work. I'm not moving anywhere near that amount of data, so I guess I'll keep everything related to the OS on the SSD.

 

[Grall]

I could imaging, however, a high-transaction-rate, SQL server killing off SSDs at an unacceptable rate.

You may be right, I don't know. It would still take some effort at least if the drive is decently large, but fortunately there are enterprise-grade SSDs these days with high-endurance flash that handles many PBs of writes (or even many, many PBs for a large drive.)

If you can write constantly at 550MB/s (may not be possible for small I/O sizes for vast majority of drives), it would still take nearly a week just to write 1PB. You'd be looking at a shedload of SQL transactions per second to hit that average load.

 

[zed]

What are you doing with that drive to generate so much write action, video editing...?

Leaving windows 8.1 alone for more than 3 minutes
If I do that the disk will literally not stop, Ive been trying to solve this from a clean install of win 8 for months, lots of other ppl have the same issue

 

[Grall]

What does the resource monitor say? What task is doing all that disk I/O?

 

[Blazkowicz]

I built a PC recently for a friend, it was plain the same as usual (some things nice, as being able to screw or unscrew a HDD on both side without dismantling everything, some things dumbs like three-pin power LED cable and lack of speaker)

It took a bit long as I was showing him every connector and stuff. But the not fun part was dealing with the UEFI which is new for me, had a new boot menu and made me run into a couple nightmares. What's this crap, and how is it so that I can't manage to install two or three OS at the same time, with OS installers seemingly wanting contradictory things?, and Windows 7 corrupts the boot sequence even though it did not get past the "choose your partition" stage.
Shocking, as I know my way around crap like booting DOS from network to flash BIOS and other weird stuff.

I've used the regular BIOS setup screen since 1995, damn . The UEFI even plays a stupid loud sound with stereon pan through line out when you enter the setup screen! I expected to play Solitaire (or something useful like a multithreaded stress test while I look at temps and voltages) but that was not there.
By chance, the sound played at something like only 70 or 80 decibels as the speakers's knob was at about a quarter.

And then the linux AMD drivers were crap in the distro, not the latest (with semi-conservative distro from March 2014) but I expected it to work better given the Radeon 6000 tech used in APUs is old.

The hair pulling issues would have been there even if the system had been pre-built, which is why I wrote this rant. Unless it comes with Windows pre-installed or you only install Windows (which can require having Windows to bake the USB flash drive) and let it at that.
Falling back in BIOS/MBR mode would be another option but here it's a system with a 2TB HDD where I wanted more than four primary partitions.. so UEFI was to make things better and easier.