Building a New Computer for my Wife

[mep]

It is time to upgrade my wife's computer, specially now since her hard drive just died and she has had to resort to using her laptop. Some of the parts showed up tonight. I bought a new case, MB, processor, RAM, video card, hard drive, and power supply. This will be an Intel based computer with an Intel MB, and Intel i7 processor. The MB is the Intel BOXDX79TO, the processor is the Intel i7 quad core 3820. The ram is Patriot Viper 4 x4 GB ram designed for the i7 for a total of 16 GB. The CPU cooler is the Intel BXRT liquid cooler. The power supply is the Ultra X4 750 watt and the video card is the EVGA GeForce GTX 660. The case is the Corsair CC9011013 WW with wire management. The hard drive is a Seagate Barracuda 1 TB drive. It should be a very nice computer.

 

[cjfrbw]

16 Gb of memory? Egad, is she modeling weather patterns?

If it has an unblinking red eye and talks in a low, soothing voice, watch out. She may be planning to eject you into outer space.

 

[Bruce B]

I only have one 64bit system in my studio and like you, it's all Intel with Win7 Prof. Just be careful mixing and matching 32/64 programs... some of mine don't like to play well with each other.

Most manufacturers support 64bit but some of the more obscure programs may not work correctly.

 

[amirm]

You are missing the most important component: an SSD for the boot drive. This will make the machine lightning fast to boot, and to use. You have not lived until you have one as your boot drive.

Computers have gotten very fast but hard disk drives remain mechanical and extremely slow. Unfortunately the operating systems and apps have become more hungry for storage. Just look at the disk light blinking away on your computer without you doing anything! SSDs have come way down in price. I paid $600 for mine and you can pick up the same thing for $99 now! But it was worth it at even $600!!!

If you don't know what brand to buy, Intel is a good one. Reliability can be a concern with some vendors and Intel usually does good work here. Here is a list of them: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=Intel+SSD

Anything over 100 Gigabytes is good. Note that you still want your hard disk. Use that for storing your large files (music, videos, pictures, etc). Apps go on SSD.

 

[ack]

SSD indeed, but look at the PCI Express drives from OCZ, by far the fastest on the market - SATA 3 is limited to 6Gbps, PCI is 10Gbps. If you want to stay with SATA 3 the OCZ Vertex 4 is probably the fastest out there.

 

[FrantzM]

You are missing the most important component: an SSD for the boot drive. This will make the machine lightning fast to boot, and to use. You have not lived until you have one as your boot drive.

Computers have gotten very fast but hard disk drives remain mechanical and extremely slow. Unfortunately the operating systems and apps have become more hungry for storage. Just look at the disk light blinking away on your computer without you doing anything! SSDs have come way down in price. I paid $600 for mine and you can pick up the same thing for $99 now! But it was worth it at even $600!!!

If you don't know what brand to buy, Intel is a good one. Reliability can be a concern with some vendors and Intel usually does good work here. Here is a list of them: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=Intel+SSD

Anything over 100 Gigabytes is good. Note that you still want your hard disk. Use that for storing your large files (music, videos, pictures, etc). Apps go on SSD.

+1 .. + 1!!

The difference is not subtle .. I have an SSD of an old (8 years or more) IBM THinkpad and the little thing screams. As fast as many present day laptop with regular HDD... Yep they are going down in price .. Some of them way under $100 .. I've had good experiences with OCZ; nothing fancy I just went for the least expensive which is already much faster than any HDD your likely to find... I don't know if they're faster than a 15,000 rpm enterprise-class SCSI drive but I wouldn't be surprised if they are ... Give it a try mep...

 

[mep]

You are missing the most important component: an SSD for the boot drive. This will make the machine lightning fast to boot, and to use. You have not lived until you have one as your boot drive.

Computers have gotten very fast but hard disk drives remain mechanical and extremely slow. Unfortunately the operating systems and apps have become more hungry for storage. Just look at the disk light blinking away on your computer without you doing anything! SSDs have come way down in price. I paid $600 for mine and you can pick up the same thing for $99 now! But it was worth it at even $600!!!

If you don't know what brand to buy, Intel is a good one. Reliability can be a concern with some vendors and Intel usually does good work here. Here is a list of them: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=Intel+SSD

Anything over 100 Gigabytes is good. Note that you still want your hard disk. Use that for storing your large files (music, videos, pictures, etc). Apps go on SSD.

Thanks Amir! I knew there was a reason I posted this info. Honestly, I wouldn't have thought of using an SSD as a boot drive. I bought this one: Intel 520 Series Solid-State Drive 240 GB SATA 6 Gb/s 2.5-Inch - SSDSC2CW240A3K5 (might as well keep it Intel)

This should be a pretty slick computer.

 

[mep]

16 Gb of memory? Egad, is she modeling weather patterns?

If it has an unblinking red eye and talks in a low, soothing voice, watch out. She may be planning to eject you into outer space.

Well, the MB will accept 64 GBs of ram. RAM is cheap and 16 GB didn't sound unreasonable in the grand scheme of things.

 

[ths61]

... but look at the PCI Express drives from OCZ, by far the fastest on the market ...

I had one of their REVO drives and it was a screamer for a couple of weeks until it died (700+MB/s if I remember correctly). The RAID failed and didn't allow me to format/erase the drive. I had proprietary customer data on it so I was reluctant to send it in for an RMA (expensive 2-week drive). Unfortunately, a lot of OCZ's PCIe drives have suffered the same infant mortality.

I have 2 of the new Samsung 840 Pro SSDs in a new laptop now and am getting 533MB/s benchmarks out of each of them without RAID0. Almost as fast as the REVO drives and hopefully immune to infant mortality.

 

[Bruce B]

I just upgraded my laptop (again), and droped in an Intel 520 series 240GB SSD... Boots in 12sec and loads programs with tons of plugins in about 2sec.

 

[ths61]

I just upgraded my laptop (again), and droped in an Intel 520 series 240GB SSD... Boots in 12sec and loads programs with tons of plugins in about 2sec.

The Intel 520 series is a great SSD. I built out 2 Asus Sabertooth/Z77 IvyBridge i7 systems last year. I tried a new OCZ Vertex 4 in the first build and was disappointed with the speed of the drive. The second build included an Intel 520 SSD which bested the OCZ Vertex 4.