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The Ultimate Gamester ! PC Spec ~ $6,000 - $7,000 USD

Discussion in 'Off-Topic' started by Viperstrike, May 16, 2011.

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  1. Jul 7, 2011 #41
    Ordaz

    Ordaz

    • Like Like x 2
  2. Jul 7, 2011 #42
    Viperstrike

    Viperstrike

    LOL Ordaz, that is a classic :laugh:

    Well I won't tell you today what I was doing lmao !

    Ok I will, I been looking at LED TVs to mount on the top front of the rackmount cabinet since it is in the corner of my room. The IP TV movies on demand runs off my credit card, so I figure what I download I pay for so in my room it will stay :D

    I will get my brother to get his own if he wants IP TV :devilish:

    Oh yea, only a small 37" LED TV, I am not going overkill this time. Or, well, no ... must restrain self, must !
     
  3. Jul 7, 2011 #43
    Viperstrike

    Viperstrike

    • Like Like x 1
  4. Jul 7, 2011 #44
    Nor Alien

    Nor Alien Wisker Fish

  5. Jul 8, 2011 #45
    Viperstrike

    Viperstrike

    LOL Nor ;) Nice setup hehe, yes, this has turned into a geek a lot thread :D
     
  6. Jul 8, 2011 #46
    Neuromancer

    Neuromancer Brainstormers Official Brain Glue

    I bought the Creative X-Fi Titanium (at that price you are probably talking about the Titanium Fidelity). Personally I feel the X-fi Titanium is cynical marketing on behalf of Creative (Creative Marketing)?. The product is old and probably doesn't have a Win7 driver CD. The only flex jack is on the line in. Line out front speakers and rear panel headphones are on the same jack. That doesn't really matter because there is a 5x2 output on the card for the front panel headphones, but I think it is a stupid design. There are only 4 speaker outputs. Having said that, if you are running the sound through a TOSlink to an AV amp then no problem.
     
  7. Jul 8, 2011 #47
    Viperstrike

    Viperstrike

    Hi Neuromaner,

    I am thinking of which way to jump as far as a dedicated soundcard goes.
    I have just gone and bought these products for wireless bluetooth sound:

    Creative Bluetooth® Audio BT-D1 USB transmitter ~ $ 60
    http://au.store.creative.com/access...oth-audio-bt-d1-usb-transmitter/98-19611.aspx

    & Creative D200 Wireless Bluetooth® Speaker ~ $ 160
    http://au.store.creative.com/speakers/creative-d200/4-19775.aspx

    I am also running the Logitech MX5500 Keyboard & mouse bluetooth ~ $ 180
    http://www.logitech.com/en-au/keyboards/keyboard-mice-combos/devices/3481

    When the new socket 2011 motherboards are released, it is likely the onboard sound will be sufficient 7.1 surround. I may just use that and port the speakers to the Creative Bluetooth® Audio BT-D1 USB transmitter for use with the D200

    As I intend to purchase 2 system of relatively the same spec, the D200 speakers will go on the server and for the gaming machine I will use a set of:

    ZiiSound T6 Wireless Surround Sound System ~ $ 500
    http://au.store.creative.com/speakers/ziisound-t6/4-20229.aspx

    I am not sure if the creative HD soundcard will improve any elements over and above the onboard motherboard sound to be honest, but if it does, this was the model I was thinking of going for:

    Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD Audiophile Sound Card ~ $ 235 (Oem version)
    http://au.store.creative.com/sound-blaster/sound-blaster-x-fi-titanium-hd/1-19749.aspx

    It would merely process the sound and send it through the USB Bluetooth transmitter.

    I am aiming to cut down on the need for wiring in the configurations as much as possible.

    Cheers,
    Viper
     
  8. Jul 8, 2011 #48
    Viperstrike

    Viperstrike

    Well I did restrain myself, I needed a TV for my room to run Bigpond Movies on demand & Bigpond TV on.

    This is the model I negotiated with our local electrical outlet:

    LG 32LV3730 Television
    32" (81cm) Full HD LED LCD TV

    http://www.lg.com/au/tv-audio-video/televisions/LG-lcd-tv-32LV3730.jsp



    http://www.binglee.com.au/lg-32lv3730-32-81cm-full-hd-led-lcd-tv/

    Negotiated it down to $ 700 pickup at the store on Monday :)

    Much restraint was shown, only 32" inches, not overkill for a bedroom come office :p

    Very easy to setup, plug it directly into your LAN and off you go ;)

    lg-televisions-LV3730-angle-large.jpg
     
  9. Jul 9, 2011 #49
    Viperstrike

    Viperstrike

    Even though I am going a little off-topic here,

    I am so tempted to get the best of both worlds, Lg service (TV) & Sony service (blueray home theater system)

    http://www.sony.com.au/product/bdv-e880 ~ 700 but I am sure I can negotiate it down to 650 or so.

    It includes Sony Australia version of IPTV2: http://www.sony.com.au/microsite/iptv2/iptv_home.html

    Noted that the Sony movies on demand service is still to be launched later this year.

    I think this will be a go and my last purchase since I now need to save save save again for these 2 new PCs :)

    I may move the TV & Blueray HTS back into the living room :devilish:
    149681.jpg
     
  10. Jul 9, 2011 #50
    Viperstrike

    Viperstrike

    This may be axed in place of the sony system if I decide to keep it all (TV+HiFi) in the bedroom come office
     
  11. Jul 10, 2011 #51
    Viperstrike

    Viperstrike

  12. Jul 10, 2011 #52
    Viperstrike

    Viperstrike

  13. Jul 10, 2011 #53
    Tanacious Darkshine D.

    Tanacious Darkshine D.

    One thing I noticed that I hope you are aware of, is that board you posted above appears to have quad channel memory, or at least that's the way they are writing it. Might want to check to see if they are just saying it has 4 slots or is actual quad channel.
    You nay have to alter your build accordingly and ensure that the other hardware you are putting in with it will work effciently with it. The memory may be too fast for some of your components, or drivers may not be written yet that give it 100% effciency. Of course there is also the wonderful MicroShight OS too... but I guess we all have to put up with that. I would do some research, that is quite a little financial adventure you are embarking on.

    I also assume you are having all this stuff imported as Austraila is behind in technology they offer there on the island?
    (Sorry sister lives there, she complains to me all the time, doesn't help matters either that I always have the new tech because of what I do.)

    Your rig is good, but I do hope you are doing something with it besides playing EU.

    I also recommend looking into the quadro cards, because if you are going to spend that much on graphics, you might as well spend a little more and get much better. (But if you are going to run into the MGPU issue anyway I don't have a real recommendation on how to deal with that. Kinda silly with what EU requires for resources to NOT support it.) I have absolutely no idea if EU supports those advanced rendering cards or not, as I dont use the rendering machine at work to play EU. (Interesting thought though....)

    Don't forget that with your 4 slot board, you may want to consider like a 9800 GT for PhysX processing. It will smooth out the graphics even more, but again, I have no idea if EU supports it or not, and you must have a 3 way SLI with PhysX support enabled in order to put it in there.

    But I am also more thinking along lines of MMP editing and rendering now, but hey, some people have that in their home.

    Heh, the "monitor" you bought looks like the smaller version of mine.... should of gone with the 37.. but it also depends on how much room you have I suppose. But the HD works great on it, and I absolutely love it for movies when I flip the thing around. Make sure you get an extendable-extractable wall mount as well as it adds for more movement. They are a few hundred dollars more, but the versatility it offers is well worth it.

    The video for that prototype board will end in failure ultimately.... they forgot one thing... how are they going to link it to the second board that handles GPU and other stuff? With a cable.... and that will in effect negate any speed boost they gain from the OC proc. The bottleneck becomes the data cable, as per usual... darn cables. Only if connected by a fiber optic cable would they have a chance, but MAN that would be one expensive board. (Just thinking about attaching all the fibers......) Did that board have 3 bridges too? I thought I saw 3 sinks on it. Hehe, interesting concept none the less. Another step towards the anomaly.

    I also didn't see it in your original post, but I do recommend spending a couple hundred on a Blu-Ray writer for your machine, at least one. DVD's will become a thing of the past for data storage soon. Blu-Ray discs can hold about 50GB of data if I am remembering it right.... like 45.9 or 48.5 or something. So prepare yourself. As soon as the comps can manage that amount of data like it was nothing, they will be the standard, and then we will be on to like Q-drives, CD2's, SCCD's, or any of those other things that most people don't know are being worked on, and I don't even know if I can say those abbreviations... oh well. It's all coming anyway and some of it even exsists.

    I don't mean to burst your enthusiasm about getting a hopped up little machine, but realize that for everything you are seeing right now that will be offered to the public soon, it already exists and works somewhere, in some facility that you don't know about and I can neither confirm or deny it's existance. "The cutting edge" of tech is a myth because literally after something is developed, they work on a new project. The time to public or general release date from final development and completion of project is usually about 6-18 months.

    So your tech that is hot off the shelf is literally outdated before it even got there. (That is where that saying its outdated as it comes out of the store comes from, not from any other source generally used to hide that the computer someone is buying is a crap piece of junk, those things have been LOOOONG outdated.) But it is the best you can get your hands on for the moment hehe.

    If you want I can put together a quote for you for some machines and PM you specs and price, can't say I will be any cheaper, but if I have 7K to work with per machine I might be able to do slightly better. But if you want to save a little by building yourself, I totally understand, my company hates it when I do that too....

    Someone said UPS.... that should be a no brainer. I don't let any of my clients buy over a 1.5K system if they are not going to get a UPS. That is just silly, and I don't want them to come crying back to me because I told them so, and there is nothing I can do about acts of God. The first storm that comes along will ruin your investment otherwise... not just a possibility but its the way reality works haha. I sell small ones with USB monitoring without line conditioning, 130V clamping, 6 hour battery (well probably 2-4 with your power requirements) for about 200 bucks. I sadly don't have a link for you, as all that stuff is on my work comp and it's the weekend. I can get one that has all the bells and whistles, line conditioning, and all the monitoring you could need, but it is much more due to the line conditioning and the battery is better. Any one you get from anywhere will be expensive to ship though, as the lightest one I know of that is effective protection weighs about 25 lbs I think, give or take a couple lbs.

    The final thing that you need to consider that I didn't see listed anywhere is cooling. If you are going to put the towers into that rack, you will need to have some sort of liquid cooling system for definite. You may be able to get away with just a liquid proc cover, but those GPU's are going to crank out some heat, as well as the quad channel memory. I recommend just doing the liquid conversion to your system, and being done with it. Even if it wasn't in that rack, I would recommend looking into it, simply based on the heat output I know you will have with what you have listed so far in any combination.

    Gl with your build.
     
  14. Jul 10, 2011 #54
    Viperstrike

    Viperstrike

    Hello Darkshine,

    Thankyou for your input on the system spec.
    I will take all you have said into consideration when building up the 2 new machines.

    The OP spec is no longer the final specification for the 2 new systems,

    In brief, I will be waiting for the Socket 2011 motherboards and processors and also PCI-Ex16 3.0 compliant video cards beofre building up these two new machines. 1 server running IIS7.5 or later (Windows 20008 R2) and 1 workstation, web design & gaming machine.

    The heat will not be such an issue as I have lowered the spec of the CPU & Graphics.

    The new 2011 motherboards use dedicated single channel memory slots, 4 as standard and with asus & supermicro, they usually build up higher spec motherboards holding twice as many slots.

    We will have to wait and see what is in store for us when these boards are finally released as to their specifics.

    Due to budget constrains, I have lowered the build cost to ~ $ 8,000 total for both machines.

    I have already at this stage, purchased the rackmount cases, the rackmount and a APC 2200VA (1980W) UPS

    So the kit will include:

    Workstation: est total ~ < 3000 each

    - Motherboard Socket 2011 with SAS/SATA controller + 8 memory slots + a number of PCI-E 3.0 slots
    - Processor 2011 (Highest but not extreme edition) + Cooler (Fan driven, no water cooling)
    - Memory 4 x 4Gb (16Gb) to fill all 4 channels, 4 channels spare to upgrade to 32Gb later if required.
    - 200Gb Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Solid State Disk (SSD) as system boot drive
    - PCI-E 3.0 Video card - eg. Nvidia 570/580 equiv for PCI-E 3.0 spec
    - Blueray reader/writer
    - Soundcard undecided at this time, I may just go with the on motherboard sound 7.1
    - 27" Asus LED Monitor (1 already purchased)
    - Antec Rackmount 19" Cases (Already purchased both cases)
    - PSU 750W Gold 80+ certified for power effeciency.

    Server additions: est total ~ < 2000

    - SAS RAID PCI-E controller with mini-SAS supporting 8 SAS or SATA 6Gb/sec drives (Backwards compatible)
    - 4 x 3000Gb HDD SATA setup in raid 10 (1+0) giving 6000Gb stripped performance & mirrored redundancy
    - 4 in 1 3.5" drive sleeve with cooling (Takes up 3 x 5.25" slots)
    - PSU 850W Gold 80+ certified for power effeciency

    Grand total ~ <8000

    Thanks again for the input, once the time draws closer (early next year) I will take your thoughts into consideration.

    Cheers,
    Viper
     
  15. Jul 10, 2011 #55
    Viperstrike

    Viperstrike

    Since the server storage is not required to be super fast,

    It may be configured with 8 x 2000Gb SATA-3 6Gb/sec eco 5,900 RMP drives ~ $ 120 each ($960)
    http://www.techbuy.com.au/p/160683/Seagate/ST2000DL003/details.asp

    Giving 8000Gb (+8000Gb mirrored) in a raid 1+0 (10) format for stripping & mirroring.

    I would then look at using a raid controller with some punch to it such as the highpoint ~ $ 600
    http://www.techbuy.com.au/p/96221/H...ED_SCSI_(SAS)_C/HighPoint/RocketRAID_4320.asp

    decisions decisions !
     
  16. Jul 10, 2011 #56
    Viperstrike

    Viperstrike

    One problem with the Eco drives is they have a 365 day online MTBF quota, hence their low price.

    The alternative is to go for SAS (serial attached scsi) drives with a 1,200,000 operating hour MTBF.
    (MTBF = Mean time before failure for those who were not sure)

    In this case, I would start with a 3000Gb + 3000Gb stripped setup (Total 6000Gb)
    So 2 x 3000Gb SAS 6Gb/sec drives ~ $ 500 each ($1000)
    http://www.techbuy.com.au/p/168680/HDD_SCSI_-_SERIAL_ATTACHED_SAS_-_3.5/Seagate/ST33000650SS.asp

    Then look at mirroring a second set later down the track when needed for redundancy.
     
  17. Jul 10, 2011 #57
    Viperstrike

    Viperstrike

    Ok decision made, I will stick with the original setup I considered earlier for the server but use SAS drives.

    - SAS RAID PCI-E controller with mini-SAS supporting 8 SAS or SATA 6Gb/sec drives (Backwards compatible)
    http://www.techbuy.com.au/p/96221/H...ED_SCSI_(SAS)_C/HighPoint/RocketRAID_4320.asp
    $ 615

    - 4 x 3000Gb HDD SAS setup in raid 10 (1+0) giving 6000Gb stripped performance & mirrored redundancy
    http://www.techbuy.com.au/p/168680/HDD_SCSI_-_SERIAL_ATTACHED_SAS_-_3.5/Seagate/ST33000650SS.asp
    $ 480 each x 4 = $ 1920

    - 4 in 1 3.5" drive sleeve with cooling (Takes up 3 x 5.25" slots)
    http://www.techbuy.com.au/p/172972/HDD_DRIVE_BAYS/CoolerMaster/STB-3T4-E3-GP.asp
    $ 40

    - PSU 850W Gold 80+ certified for power effeciency
    http://www.techbuy.com.au/p/150613/POWERSUPPLIES_800W_-_899W/Corsair/CMPSU-850AXAU.asp
    Additional $ 40.00 over and above the 750W

    Total = ~ $ 2650

    Ofc the prices will drop by early next year ;) So I may still achieve a closer to $ 2000 quota on this.
     
  18. Jul 10, 2011 #58
    Viperstrike

    Viperstrike

  19. Jul 10, 2011 #59
    aridash

    aridash large throbbing member

    theres some imprssive IT porn going on in here, but a couple of questions...

    why the rack mounting? (i only skim read so the first might be anwsered) it seems a massive extra cost to buy a cabinet, to then only place two machines in. sure it will be tidy and look smart in the corner of the room, but seems a big luxury.

    then, why the 6TB of data storage? thats alot. for a webserver its insane, unless you intend to host some substantial quantity of video, in which case you wouldnt be able to serve it anywere over a home ADSL line. or is it effectivly for storage? could save lot of cash there by scaling down that capacity. or spend it on a backup solution...
     
  20. Jul 10, 2011 #60
    Viperstrike

    Viperstrike

    Hi Aridash,

    I leave 2RU space between each item of which shelves are used to store items on taking up 1RU themselves.

    each RU = 45mm

    - Computers need 7RU each (1RU shelf, 2RU free space for air flow, 4RU case) x 2 computers = 14 RU
    - UPS needs 5 RU (1RU shelf, 2 RU free space, 2RU UPS)
    - Colour laser printer needs 10 RU (1RU shelf, 5RU Unit, 4RU to get your hand in to take out prints)
    - Scanner is on a roll out tray needing 4 RU (1 RU tray, 1 RU unit, 2 RU space)
    - 4 fan 1 RU unit requires 3 RU (1 for fan unit, 2 RU space)

    Total = 14+5+10+4+3 = 36 RU

    It is needed as I only have 1.5M x 1.5M free in a corner of the room to put all this equipment. I merged my bedroom with my office room as my sister will be coming to live with us. So she will get my old bedroom (smaller than this room)

    I will admit 6TB is somewhat overkill to start with, though I am more thinking of future purpose, 3TB would be plenty to start with.

    Since my brother is also looking to upgrade to a similar spec machine too (3rd computer which won't be in the RM solution). He will be looking at storing all his Steam account games as will I on the server as backups (A feature of steam to backup and delete off the local HDD).

    Together our library of Steam games totals in excess of 1 TB ~ 350 games. He is also heavily into music & videos of which he has a portable 1TB jam packed and would like to put that on the server and get rid of the slower usb drive. They are all DMR style so deleting them is not in his interest since he paid for them.

    As far as web development goes, I have a lot of clipart CDs and free to use media that I would like to place on the server for easy access ~ 200 Gb worth that I have collected over the years.

    So 3TB would be sufficient, though 6TB would be thinking of the future and what space we will need for the next 5years. I have no intention of doing another upgrade on HDD storage for at least 3 - 5 years.

    Since most of this data is worth in excess of several thousand spent between us, I think the RAID 1+ 0 is a necessity, mirroring being the most important, stripping just gives an extra boost to performance.

    As far as ADSL goes, we are due for the NBN in roughly 2 years which will be when I am likely to launch the web development service for small businesses in my area. With the NBN I will be on a 100 Mb/sec service.

    www.nbn.gov.au
     
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