New build advice plz, Antec P182, E8500, 750GB Seagate Barracuda, but MB? SSD?

[FlakJack]

Hi, my 2nd post on this forum, I mainly signed up to ask a little build advice.
I have built before but a long time ago so I am not up on the current tech.

At the moment I have an an IDEQ 200n xp2800, 4-5 years old, it still runs everything I want pretty much although I don't tend to run the very latest games. But I was slightly disappointed with the IDEQ, I didn't realise it would only have room for 1 internal HD, and mine only has 75GB, and since I had to install a new PSU and 6cm fan because of a bad rattle on the old one its noiser than it used to be.

I use my PC for, bit of hobbyist programming, storing and watching digital media, playing games although as I say not the very latest as they normally need an expensive gfx card. So general purpose really.
I want my PC to be as quiet as realistically possible without spending a fortune as its located in the family room.

So this is what I am thinking.
Antec P182 Advanced Super Midi Tower (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Cases/MIDI+Tower/Antec+P182+Advanced+Super+Midi+Tower+-+Gun+Metal+Black+?productId=28846):
I read that it is really quiet and big enough to add an 9800gx2 if I need to at a later date.
E8500 (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/CPUs+%2F+Processors/Intel/Core+2+Duo/Intel+Core+2+Duo+E8500+3.16GHz+%28Retail+775%29+?p roductId=30244):
I was told it currently offers best value since most software doesn't take advantage of quadcores atm.
NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Graphics+Cards/PCI-E/nVIDIA+GeForce+9+Series/nVidia+GeForce+9500GT+512MB+PCI-E+?productId=33062): for £45
Would run everything I want for now and seems cheap, I intend to upgrade later if needed.
750GB Seagate Barracuda - SATA - 32MB (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Hard+Drives/Serial+ATA/750GB+Seagate+Barracuda+-+SATA+-+32MB+?productId=31406):
Very big and not too expensive.

I was going to get an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro but I read some people had difficulting fitting it to some boards with a lot of heatpipes around, so maybe you think an alternative is better.
I don't intend to overclock but want upgraded cooler for reduced noise.

Now the problem is I don't know what Motherboard and mem would be best.
I don't think I really need duel gfx cards but if the cost is not much more it would be nice to have the option as I don't upgrade often. And I want to have PCIE2.0 so I can add a better gfx card at a later date.
I have been looking at MB's ofcourse and I ended up desiding on:
Asus Striker II extreme nVidia nForce 790i Ultra (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Motherboards/Socket+775+%28Intel%29/Asus+Striker+II+Extreme+nVIDIA+nForce+790i+Ultra+S Li+Socket+775+Motherboard+?productId=30760)
But then I have to get DDR3 mem, and that combo add a lot to the cost and I wonder if its really worth it.. hmm

Ofcourse depending on the final spec I go for that will effect my PSU choice, but I was thinking of:
OCZ EliteXStream 800W (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Power+Supplies/500w+%2B/OCZ+EliteXStream+800W+Power+Supply+?productId=3109 5)
if that is quiet enough which it claims to be.


Oh and another thing, SSD.
I read that OCZ Core Series solid state drive - 32 GB (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Hard+Drives/Solid+State/OCZ+32GB+Core+Series+Solid+State+Disk+?productId=3 2417) would be ideal for running an OS from as its so much faster than a normal HD. But when I look at specs, "120-143 MB/s 80-93 MB/s, read/write" that is not faster than a normal HD is it ?
I know its the seek time that is extremely fast, but I figure its a balance thats needed, no point having great seek time if the sustained access speed is a limiting factor. I couldn't seem to quickly find speeds on a normal HD, some claiming 3GB/s but thats just the interface not actual speed I think?

[Monkey]

Ok, well you seam to be fairly sussed out already.

First of all, that antec case will fit most things. Including all graphics cards.


And you dont really need that PSU. A nice stealthXstream or modXstream should show you right with the kind of hardware your looking at.

The SSD is not really worth the money unless your an absolute performance lover. I would recommend getting a samsung spinpoint they, come in varied sizes so you have plenty too choose from and there a nice and quiet disk.

Not sure which motherboard and ram to recommend as i cant get on aria at the minute.

Hope this helps though

EDIT: Oh by the way, i bought the arctic cooling freezer and i only had a slight hitch, and that was i had to move the fan one notch up the heatsink. The fan has little clips on it which allow you to do this easily. Obviously it depends on which mobo you go fof.

[FlakJack]

Well I wasn't seriously thinking of getting an SSD until I saw the one on aria 32GB for only £95, I have not had much experience with Vista yet but it surely couldn't need more than that?, imo it should make a massive speed difference since windows is constantly accessing the HD for temp files, page files and such. But I just wanted to get more info on speeds comparisons.

[Lynx]

If im honest very minumum is 40GB for vista, when you get all your programs installed, game swap files, page file, and everything. Vista uses 15GB itself for install, let alone everything else.

[marsey99]

1 ssd gives about the same performance as 2 7k rpm drives in raid (striped) but if you have 2 ssd striped they are mcuh faster.

[FlakJack]

What do you mean by much faster? if 1 SSD is the same as 2 7k raid'ed, is not 2 SSD raided twice as fast? or does raid work much better with SSD?
Does anyone have any stats or is this just your feeling based on experience?

I have personally wasn't thinking of using raid because I was told that although faster it wasn't that much faster and you have more risk of losing data if a fault on either drive. But i would try it if it did make a big enough difference.

[wonderlust]

Sandisk (iirc) have claimed that SSDs don't work very well with the way vista works,

they are working on a new system to fix this

[Audigex]

SSD: Not fast enough for the money (Yet)

When they start getting 160GB+ out for similar money to the higher capacity (500gb/1TB) conventional drives, they'll be worth having. For now, you won't notice the difference to any great degree. At the very least you'll need a 64GB drive, and for that money you could raid 5 three 160gb drives and get more space, comparable performance and redundancy.

Do you REALLY care about 2 seconds faster bootup? I spend that long distracted before I realise "oh, right - login screen"

As for the rest, there are some good choices there. If you want to be as future proof as possible (it's hard to know exactly how long LGA775 will be around) you need P45 and PCI-E 2.0

I'd also suggest getting a board with both DDR2 and DDR3 slots, for now. Using DDR2 will keep the cost down now (and offset the costs of having a DDR3 capable board), and when DDR3 drops from it's relatively astronomical prices now, you can easily swap it.

Some good choices with the hardware you've chosen so far though :)

[FlakJack]

Well if Vista needs only 15gig for a clean install and I store most of my stuff on a bigger 2nd drive (750gig) why would I need more than 30gig SSD for the OS?
My dads laptop only has 40gig, with XP home on it he hasn't used half of it yet.


Don't care about 2 secs boot time no :) , but it does annoy me when I have a new fast PC that is slowed down by the OS seemingly wanting to constantly access the HD, tbh its not as bad as it used to be since I added more mem, but really half a gig should have been plenty for my needs, this was a few years ago.

I guess I'll wait and follow SSD prices a bit.


I have not seen a board that supports both DDR2 and DDR3, I guess I haven't looked hard enough, do you have any suggestion though?
I have been looking at:
Asus StrikerII Extreme (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Motherboards/Socket+775+%28Intel%29/Asus+Striker+II+Extreme+nVIDIA+nForce+790i+Ultra+S Li+Socket+775+Motherboard+?productId=30760) £208exVAT
and
ASUS P5Q3 Deluxe (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Motherboards/Socket+775+%28Intel%29/Asus+P5Q3+Deluxe%2FWIFI-AP+iP45+Socket+775+Motherboard+?productId=32297) £112exVAT


Sorry if its a stupid question but howcome the StrikerII costs £90 more money?
I was trying to compare both on the Asus site and I didn't notice a major difference, other than the one being crossfire and the other Nvidia SLI.
Perhaps I made a mistake and missed something important?

Also, is it not possible to buy one 2gig DDR3 mem, and then upgrade later if I need to? from what I see the mem chips always seem to be in pairs now, this didn't used to be the case?

[wonderlust]

check out this review

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/flash-ssd-hard-drive,2000.html

[Audigex]

I've seen a review of an MSI or Asus board with both, I'll try to drag it up. Vista is more bloated than XP, that 15GB clean install is pretty wishful. Mine's over 40 with just FF, security apps and one game (Counter Strike ~4gb) so 36gb before I start putting office, adobe suite etc

[Aaron]

My vista install is 12.8Gb, plus 68mb for AV software.. Havent got any real games on the laptop tho, so cant comment on that..

[FlakJack]

I guess I should get
ASUS P5Q-E (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Motherboards/Socket+775+%28Intel%29/Asus+P5Q-E+iP45+Socket+775+Motherboard+?productId=32296)
And the DDR2 Patriot Mem everyone here raves about.
As I seriously doubt the DDR3 MB and Mem make as much difference as the price would suggest..

Is that MB decent enough, or you recommend an alternative? there seemed to be 3 with very similar names/ID's and specs but different prices.


I will wait on the SSD, can easily add one later. Although I am supprised your Vista takes 40gig, I was thinking only putting Vista on the SSD and almost everything else on the bigger drive, I assumed a 32gig SSD would be plenty for just an OS, what version of Vista are you using?

[marsey99]

i think you could nlite vista and get it much lighter on the hdd but tbh 64gb would be a min imo.