My New Build For Aces High- Feedback Desired

[Zazen13]

I am about to hit "BUY NOW" on Newegg for a new build I am working on for AH and the other games I play. I just wanted to float my build out there to see if Skuzzy, Waffle or anyone else have had problems with any of the components individually with AH or just in general. I am primarily buying it for AH, as my 5+ year old Alienware box I had customized with the old 4 X AGP architecture and no Hyper-threading processor ain't cutting it very well now and definitely won't cut it at all soon. Even now, prior to the new AH graphics update, my FR's drop to the mid teens if there's a lot of planes (especially buff boxes), puffy AA and/or smoke & fire and that's with everything set to minimal settings and skins disabled.

Zazen's New Build:

Processor: Intel Core i7 2.66 Ghz Quad-Core

Motherboard: EVGA A1 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX

Memory: 12 Gigs of Corsair Dominator (6 X 2 GB) DDR3 1600 SDRAM PC3 12800 Triple-Channel

Hard Disks: 2 X Western Digital VelociRaptors 300GB in RAID 0 config.

Display: AOC 25 Inch LCD 3ms @ 1920 X 1200

Video Card: EVGA Geforce GTX 285 FTW 1 GB 512 bit GDDR3 PCI-E 2.0X16
(debating whether it's worth going SLI on this, probably not based on the benchmarks I've seen, but maybe later)

Power Supply & Case: Non-Modular PC Power & Cooling 860W SLI ready in an Antec 1200 Full tower w/ excellent cooling system and circulation.

OS: Windows Vista Home Premium 64 Bit for system builders


Let me know what you guys think about the build and if there's a lemon in there, compatability issues, a potential future bottleneck or something I missed I'd love some feedback before I sign the check.

Just FYI on this for anyone else looking to upgrade their box: I was originally just going to try a Falcon Northwest custom job, but after doing some research a $7,500 build by them was only $2,500 if I built it myself using almost exactly the same individual components from their builders worksheet.

[Getback]

Looks great to me Zazen. However, I would really think about PC Power and Cooling for the power supply. It is very highly rated.

[Skuzzy]

I wouldn't touch an Antec power supply with a 10 foot pole.  There was a time when they had excellent supplies, but not anymore.  You cannot trust how they rate thier supplies.

You really do not want to mess around with a low quality supply when building high end systems.

[Masherbrum]

If you go with a Modular Power Supply, go Tagan.   If not, go PC & Cooling.

[Zazen13]

Great, fixed it on my build sheet. It's been about 7 years since I built a PC, back then Antec was King.

[Getback]

Great, fixed it on my build sheet. It's been about 7 years since I built a PC, back then Antec was King.

Zazen, didn't you have an alienware computer? If you don't want to build check out some folks on the bbs.

[Zazen13]

Zazen, didn't you have an alienware computer? If you don't want to build check out some folks on the bbs.

Yea, I wasn't very pleased with my Alienware. I paid like 7 grand for it 5-6 years ago and it shipped with a bad stick of ram, obviously they never tested it because it wouldn't pass post. I will never buy from them again. I was playing with the FalconNorthwest builder when I went ahead and did that self-build sheet component by component on Newegg.

[Dragon]

Not enough RAM   

[eagl]

I'd personally ditch the raid0 and go with a single larger hard drive.  Too much can go wrong with raid 0 for so small of a payoff.

If you want to throw money at hard drives, get a sub-$100 boot hard drive and a small SSD drive for your games.  You'd see better responses from the instant access to smallish files on an SSD than you'd get from the faster sustained transfer rates you get from raid 0.  Raid 0 will do very little (for example) to help out loading ah skins during gameplay, while an SSD just *might* help get those suckers to load faster.

[Fulmar]

If you're going to spend that much money on a computer, like eagl said, why not use SSD.  I'd only stick with RAID 0 if you were on a strict budget which doesn't appear to be so.  RAID 0 works great, but you have to remember to always back up your data because the failure chances are doubled.

Also, what programs are you going to be using that use 12gb of ram?

[BaldEagl]

All that and no sound card or SATA optical drive(s)?

[TilDeath]

If you decide to go modular with a Tagan PSU you will need the 1100 or 1300 watt PSU the BZ 900 and under will not power the i7 boards without showing a graphics failure on the EVGA x58 boards.

Also WD has 640GB (WD6401AALS) drives that are alot less monies and are almost as fast as the Raptors for 1/3 the cost and double the storage (when in Raid 0)  Some here suggested SSD drives.  They are still high dollar and not reliable, very high failure rates.  If you decide to go this route it almost pays for the 2nd video card.

Memory I prefer OCZ part number OCZ3X1600LV6GK  Your going to have a hard time with 12gb of the Corsair getting it to actually run at 1600 at the rated timings using the QPI.   You need  Intel Extreme Memory Profiles (XMP), to get 12gb to operate at rated speeds over the sold kit sizes (3gb - 6gb).  These are profiles that are embedded in the memory and read by the BIOS and set.

[Max]

Suggested changes:

Antec 900 case

PC Power & Cooling 750w PS

XP Pro (saves 6 stix of ram & multiple headaches)

[RTHolmes]

Hard Disks: 2 X Western Digital VelociRaptors 300GB in RAID 0 config.

no RAID0 - doubles the failure rate of the drives, assuming a battery-backed hardware raid controller, for minimal usable performance increase. anecdotally the failure rate is way, way higher, presumably because most consumer RAID0 systems use software controllers.

2x300GB = 300GB RAID1 array if you want redundancy, 600GB if you need the space

also if you're going to use RAID, make sure the disks come from different batches too - reduces the chance of both disks dying at the same time.

[Charge]

"Memory: 12 Gigs of Corsair Dominator (6 X 2 GB) DDR3 1600 SDRAM PC3 12800 Triple-Channel"

Do you have any specific application you need that kind of memory resources for? I had 8 Gb and dumped half of it since I have only ever managed to use only 75% tops of 4 Gb. I'd say everything over 4Gb is a waste of money unless you have application that specifically needs it.

-C+