I've been getting some advice for a new computer from SA, but thought I would ask if anyone here has any recommendations as well. I'll just cut/paste my posts for you to check out
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The thread from SA had most of these parts recommended as the go-to ones due to quality and price, so I guess those hard drives were decent as well. I mean, I'm terrified of losing stuff too, as I have lost drives before, but is there anything about the larger drives that makes them particularly worse, other than losing more stuff at once?
As for the PSU, from what I saw in the thread, a lot of people end up buying something a lot more powerful than they need, citing that most loads on even moderately high-end systems were only getting up to like 350W. I don't know 100% if there is anything keeping the PSU I chose from working with the other parts, I'm still waiting for the people in the thread to confirm whether it will work or not, but I'm guessing it will?
As for water cooling, I'm kinda interested in it, but I've just heard so many damn problems about it that I think I'd rather stay away from it. Apparently a lot of the stock cases/other stuff the thread was suggesting mentioned even extra fans not being necessary for minor overclocking in most cases. And considering the OC stuff is just something I might eventually mess around with, not something I NEED to do, I'm that much more against going completely gung-ho in its direction.
As for the video card, I've never heard of that brand myself, but it had great reviews. I picked out an MSI one prior to that, but saw it only had 1 DVI port. The others I saw that were in stock/decently priced were also brands I had never used.
larger HDDs are less reliable, they have shorter MTBF (real measure, not company-listed). they are just not ready for prime time yet imo. i don't recommend their use in business applications, but if you're well prepared for hw failure with raid and backups then it's your call
psu draw averages way, way lower than peak. but during startup a high amount is used and a heavily loaded system may not even boot (mine wouldn't boot on a 650w psu) so you don't actually 'use' 1000w on avg but i def. need it
water cooling is easy and imo totally worth it. overheating is a bitch and doesn't have a hard 'edge' where shit starts breaking, you'll just start having things act wonky and then get random BSODs
Do you have a recommendation for a good size, safe hard drive? They suggested the 640GB WD Black Caviar and the 500GB Seagate Barracuda (which I either have now, or have a variant of).
What about water-cooling? What is a good place to start? Would I just get a case that has it built in? The main experience I had with it was a roommate completely custom doing it, even building his own water tanks from sheets of plastic. In the end he spent months, 2 grand, the system never worked right. Although store-bought, I could see that solving most of his issue.
I imagine water-cooling would reduce the noise factor a lot as well, due to the lack of fans, right? Or do they still use some fans (obviously some parts will have them, like the PSU and whatnot)?
HDDs: currently I personally trust 500GB as the largest safe (I have a huge array of 350s, myself, but I am crazy). Again, it's way more important that you implement backups and RAID than use smaller drives. If you're gonna pick one, you know which I rec. (:
Water-cooling: I recommend store-bought unless you're pretty handy or find a tutorial you find to be particularly well written. Most store-boughts are heat exchangers (radiators) so a fan is still necessary, though possibly less beefy? If you get into some research and decide on a manual solution you can use an air-conditioning type gas-expansion system, a simpler evaporative system, or a power-hungry but super awesome thermoelectric system (peltier device!). They all have pros/cons (mostly gotta make sure the colder-than-room-temp systems dont get condensated). I personally am a MADMAN so I would use a peltier device. Not necessarily the advice I'd give you, though. To be fair..I am using store bought. Because I am lazy and have not used my desktop often enough to leave it overclocked. Actually I could go on a whole tangent about how I mostly leave VMs sitting on the server and remotely manage them from my laptop, nearly obviating the need for a desktop...
Also also, I use servers. This is important. I don't need as many cooling fans because I only have one small HDD in my box.. I've got a couple of terabytes in the racked server, which is in another room so it can blow those fans as loud as it pleases :D (this also lets me have a nifty HTPC attached to my TV which has no disk drive and thus is fanless)
As for the PSU, from what I saw in the thread, a lot of people end up buying something a lot more powerful than they need, citing that most loads on even moderately high-end systems were only getting up to like 350W. I don't know 100% if there is anything keeping the PSU I chose from working with the other parts, I'm still waiting for the people in the thread to confirm whether it will work or not, but I'm guessing it will?
As for water cooling, I'm kinda interested in it, but I've just heard so many damn problems about it that I think I'd rather stay away from it. Apparently a lot of the stock cases/other stuff the thread was suggesting mentioned even extra fans not being necessary for minor overclocking in most cases. And considering the OC stuff is just something I might eventually mess around with, not something I NEED to do, I'm that much more against going completely gung-ho in its direction.
As for the video card, I've never heard of that brand myself, but it had great reviews. I picked out an MSI one prior to that, but saw it only had 1 DVI port. The others I saw that were in stock/decently priced were also brands I had never used.
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larger HDDs are less reliable, they have shorter MTBF (real measure, not company-listed). they are just not ready for prime time yet imo. i don't recommend their use in business applications, but if you're well prepared for hw failure with raid and backups then it's your call
psu draw averages way, way lower than peak. but during startup a high amount is used and a heavily loaded system may not even boot (mine wouldn't boot on a 650w psu)
so you don't actually 'use' 1000w on avg but i def. need it
water cooling is easy and imo totally worth it. overheating is a bitch and doesn't have a hard 'edge' where shit starts breaking, you'll just start having things act wonky and then get random BSODs
Reply
What about water-cooling? What is a good place to start? Would I just get a case that has it built in? The main experience I had with it was a roommate completely custom doing it, even building his own water tanks from sheets of plastic. In the end he spent months, 2 grand, the system never worked right. Although store-bought, I could see that solving most of his issue.
I imagine water-cooling would reduce the noise factor a lot as well, due to the lack of fans, right? Or do they still use some fans (obviously some parts will have them, like the PSU and whatnot)?
Reply
Water-cooling: I recommend store-bought unless you're pretty handy or find a tutorial you find to be particularly well written. Most store-boughts are heat exchangers (radiators) so a fan is still necessary, though possibly less beefy?
If you get into some research and decide on a manual solution you can use an air-conditioning type gas-expansion system, a simpler evaporative system, or a power-hungry but super awesome thermoelectric system (peltier device!). They all have pros/cons (mostly gotta make sure the colder-than-room-temp systems dont get condensated). I personally am a MADMAN so I would use a peltier device. Not necessarily the advice I'd give you, though. To be fair..I am using store bought. Because I am lazy and have not used my desktop often enough to leave it overclocked. Actually I could go on a whole tangent about how I mostly leave VMs sitting on the server and remotely manage them from my laptop, nearly obviating the need for a desktop...
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