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SUBSIM: The Web's #1 resource for all submarine & naval simulations since 1997 |
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#1 |
Admiral
![]() Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Canada
Posts: 2,272
Downloads: 58
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Hey guys, well, lately I have been working on building a new computer for a friend. I think that my build might be of interest to the subsim crowd. I ordered the parts a week or so back, and I don***8217;t have the invoice in my inbox, so I might not have the exact components unfortunately.
So first of all, my friend is a big gamer, plays lots of pc games. However, gaming only comprises 10-20% of the usage of this computer. He has a small UMPC for a laptop, and would rather not use it when at home. Thus the other 80% of the time, he would be doing work processing, spreadsheets, and internet browsing. Virtualization performance is also a must, he is a hobbyist programmer, and he usually runs a few virtual machines on the computer to do testing. The hypervisor we are working with will soon be Hyper-V, and we would like high virtual machine performance. So first up, is the CPU. We chose the Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 CPU. Great performance, great price, low thermal requirements, and amazing for virtualization; This CPU gets a MAJOR recommendation from me. Ditch your I7s, Xeon e3s are much better. Note: we used the v2 version of this CPU, do not get the v1, it is sandy bridge, v2 is ivy bridge. Link: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117286 The motherboard choice for a Xeon is much more difficult. We got the ASRock Z77 Pro4-M. It is a z77 board with good, reliable build quality. It works great with our CPU choice, and is a good board for the price. This generation, for LGA 1155, I often end up recommending the z77 chipset. It is simply the most commonly available one at lower prices. Even if you don***8217;t need the graphics, you might want to go with one. Link: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157306 For ram, we decided to go all out (hey, it***8217;s not that expansive). We got the Patriot Viper 3 32GB kit. 4 sticks of good quality, 8 gb ram. Link: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220727 On the storage side, we used a mix of SSD and traditional HDD. We got 2 OCZ Vertex 3 120gb Sata III SSDs. They are in raid 0 configuration, for maximum speed. The goal is to put the OS and core applications on the SSD for maximum speed. Link: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227706 With the SSDs, we also got a 3TB drive to store ALL our files. We went with a Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001. It***8217;s a no frills, simply, large drive for all our storage needs. Link: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148844 Finally, for the video card, we went with the nVidia GTX 680. We got the ASUS GTX680-DC2T-2GD5, a cheap, simply, high performance system. Link: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121634 So in all, we built ourselves the ultimate PC. In all, it costs almost 2000 to get everything up (without the screen). |
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#2 |
Kaiser Bill's batman
Join Date: May 2010
Location: AN72
Posts: 13,203
Downloads: 76
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You haven't mentioned the OS? Which is unlike you
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#3 | |
Admiral
![]() Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Canada
Posts: 2,272
Downloads: 58
Uploads: 0
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![]() We are using the windows 8 RTM right now, and we will get Windows 8 when it officially comes out (only 69$) Mind you, this configuration boots FAST. it boots in like 2 seconds, literally |
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#4 |
Navy Seal
![]() Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 5,874
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Nice build. What case have you got it in?
I would have changed a couple of things myself, but at this level of hardware I think personal preference really outweighs actual performance/efficiency differences ![]() Probably wouldn't have bothered to RAID the SSDs, I'm not sure the speed difference is noticeable. Probably would have gone for a i7 for VM (or even one of those nice AMD 8-cores), and a 7970 instead of the 680 (but that's just me, my first proper GPU was ATI and I'm not really letting go of the bias ![]()
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#5 | |
Admiral
![]() Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Canada
Posts: 2,272
Downloads: 58
Uploads: 0
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With the RAID ssd, windows literally boots in 5 seconds. The boot speed is almost instant. Sure, we went overboard, but goddamn it, its fast. As for the xeon + 680, we chose the xeon since it can run silent, with the fan off. For a bedroom PC (that often is kept on at night for downloads and what not), this is a must. The Xeon produces almost no heat (so we can turn off the fan), and the graphics card can be turned off completely with a few hacks. As for AMD/Ati, I liked their parts but their performance per watt is dreadful. Sure, the AMD FX is slightly cheaper, but the amount you lose on your power bill (for a pc that is on 24/7), you lose the savings quite quickly. |
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#6 |
Stowaway
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Windows 8, oh boy, I just put a very old pc together with windows 98se, got an old cakewalk app running again, pretty good. High end performance computers cost biggusbuckus in the uk.
http://www.ebuyer.com/258888-xeon-pr...-bx80623e31240 |
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