New PC, again...

[Luxpingu]

My old PC died last Monday. Which makes me sad, it was only 3years old and i treated it (reasonably) well. :p
I know for sure the gfx-card broke; bars and boxes in all colors all over the screen. When entering windows the PC crashes.
The Mobo may be broken too. Ive tried an older gfx card. Still errors on the screen (though no crash).
All monitors/cables still work fine with other PCs.

Currently im on my eeeeeee-pc... definately cant replace a real PC... -_-

Sooo, with all the new stuff that came out in the last 3 years I read up a bit and configured a new rig. Cant wait till i have it here. *Excited*

MSI Big Bang Trinergy, Intel P55, ATX, DDR3 (300€)
Intel Core i7-870 Box 8192Kb, LGA1156 (460€)
Powercolor HD5770 1024MB Play! Retail (130€)
Powercolor HD5770 1024MB Play! Retail (130€)
4GB Kit OCZ DDR3 PC3-10666 Platinum Low-Voltage CL7 (100€)
4GB Kit OCZ DDR3 PC3-10666 Platinum Low-Voltage CL7 (100€)
WD Caviar GreenPower 1,5TB SATA II (100€)
SONY Optiarc AD7240 S-ATA RAM (20€)
Super-Flower Amptac Pyramid 1000W (150€)
Silverstone TemJin SST-TJ07B-W - black (270€)
Asus VH242H (190€)

Total +-2000€ / 1750£
Realy looking forward to that Mobo. Its pricy, but comes with lots of nifty features. OC capabilities are huge^^
The newer version (socket 1366) would be better suited for multi-gpu/mutli-cpu, but I would have to get an i7-9xx extreme (beneath are weaker than the i7-870) to that. The CPU alone would add at least 1000€ (875£)

I believe we all know how awsome the new i7 are. So basicly the i7-870 is the strongest after the 9xx extreme and uses socket 1156. An i5 would be much cheaper, but does not have hyper-threading enabled, which sucks. The i7-860 would have been an alternative, but the fact that the store didnt have these in stock and that i immediately fell in love with the 870 after reading about it, got me to buy this one. :D Its also quite good if overclocked (should be able to hit 4Ghz xD ), but that means turning off the turbo-modus/powersaving. Im not sure whether i wanna do that all the time, but well, its there... can be handy. :p
Ill definately get a new CPU cooler at some point, not sure whats good there. (better sooner than later, standard cooler sucks)

Ok, now for the gfx cards... well, they are good. Not the best. I got those because I wanted to have dx11 ready cards, but not spend too much money on them yet (hence no 58xx). Ill upgrade to nvidia if they hit the market and are not "too" overpriced. (yeah, sth stuck in my mind, telling me nvidia>ati and intel>amd, never knew why... *shrugs*)
Also you can connect 3 monitors to a single card.^^

For the RAMs, well... its basicly what i got suggested. Timings are not the most awsome, but they are good. They seem to do well, even if overclocked. Though I rarely mess with memory speed.

HDD/DVD same... took the suggestion. (And i have the ones from my PC before^^)
Nope, no blue-ray thingie for me. Not going to buy blue-rays. (nor DL them, far too big. Im good with dvd)

1000W PSU seems sufficient enough. Even with 2 gfx-cards and OCed CPU. Cable management and so forth included.

The case is pricy too, but convinced me. Lots of slots. And the part where the Mobo is mounted on can be pulled out. Usefull.^^

And on top of that, a new 24" screen.

All in all i believe i did my homework. Read alot of articles and reviews and tried to find parts that go well together (I can go more into details if you want... or just link the sources xD). Price is quite high i admit, but its good to be up to date with the hardware again. :D

Comments... ? :D

[G0rF]

Sounds awesome.

Personally I'd get 3 x 500GB drives at 7400RPM and RAID them, rather than get a single 1.5TB drive, but that's just my personal preference.

LOL, power saving. Fuck that shit.

Only one 24" monitor? You already have one? I'd have got two myself, they're about £130 for a 24" 1920 x 1200 so then you could use the full connectivity on the GFX cards. I mean hell, you're already spending two grand, what's another ton?

[Luxpingu]

I thought about RAID for a moment, but nah. Because if one HDD loses its data or gets any form of error, the whole setup wont work anymore and id have to wipe everything (i think thats how it works ?). Theres another RAID configuration that duplicates the data, but that would half the storage capacity.:-/
If im wrong, or theres no reason to worry, can RAID be done with 2 or 3 different HDDs? Because I have a 1TB and a 500GB HDD from the old PC. Also, would it be possible to use say only one partition (of the same size) of each HDD for RAID? Would that make sense? (RAID for windows and games, no RAID for data).
Or, heh, instead of bothering you with the noobish questions ill look into RAID setups again.^^

Yeah, powersaving, i dont realy care about. The main thing is that the CPU can turn off unneeded cores (power consumtion almost zero), and use the freed up power (yes, thats power, energy, ermm watts) to increase the clock of the other, working cores. Thats what intel calls their turbo modus.
Id have to turn off that modus, which would leave the CPU at running permanently say 4Ghz, wasting alot of it resources, producing heat, decreasing the life span of the chip (worst case).
(And no, im not that much of an expert, just telling you what i remembered from some sites talking about that stuff xD)

Currently I have 22" Monitor (not even a year old) and an old 19".
I wanted to see what i can do with these +the 24" before i bought another one. But i can already imagine that itll be complicated to use extended desktop with games (eg. eve) if they have different resolutions.
So yes, ill probably end up buying a second 24" at a local PC shop anyways. :p

[G0rF]

RAID of any type requires identical drives.

Ah, that turbo thing... un-needed cores... hysterical. Why not load-balance all of them and increase speeds across the board? (Rhetorical, there's obviously a good reason, probably, as you say, lifespan).

[Ackercoke]

and we shall know this beast as "deep thought"

[Jekht]

and we shall know this beast as "deep thought"

That's a really cool name actually :p

I never really did name my current pc. I suppose "The Doctor" would be appropiate if I was to now.

[G0rF]

Doktor Avalanche.

[Luxpingu]

Haha, deep thought. Made me lol. :)
But doesnt fit into my naming scheme... So far my PCs were all female. xD (insert random geek doesnt get laid joke here :D)
Lets see:
First pc - Jessica
the one who broke - Tytanya (uh uh, guess after who its named, sry for stealing the name tyt >.<)
eeeeeeepc - Nathalya
new one - deep thought, for now, ill come up with sth else^^

[Jekht]

Name it after a prominent female thinker then.

Call her "Seven"

Ok I think I might be slightly obsessed with Voyager at the moment :/