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| Best PC
enthusiast combination for 2008 |
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This year
is going to be a landmark one for the computer industry. Quad
core processors are in full bloom. Software processing speed
requirements are stabilizing for the average user. RAM prices are
reasonable and hard drive space plentiful.
A system built today could easily last five years or more in terms
of computing power (excluding game playing). Sure innovations in size and heat output will
come along but for raw power the need has been met. How much more
horsepower do you need for your vehicle beyond 300hp? This
advancement
is happening in processor technology.
Thus today we present a system that will carry you forward into
the future. If your not running Quad Core your missing out on
today's innovation and needlessly waiting for the next big
thing.
Our system presented here is designed with the best use of your
dollars and quiet computing requirements. Something faster is
not worth the money unless listed. Quiet components are selected
over noisy ones. At all times is quality paramount. Enjoy and
let us know how your build goes. |
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CORSAIR
520HX $140
First up we have the power supply. The main thing to look for in a power
supply is quality and clean stable output across all rails. The
CORSAIR 520HX is 520watt capable but does not use that much power
unless needed. You should always have more wattage capacity on
hand as most power supplies are only able to provide up to 80% of
their rating. Taking the 80% efficiency into account you want
extra power so that your not running at maximum output all the
time. A little extra power when all four cores are going full
speed along with video card usage makes this power supply a good
choice. If gaming and running the GeForce 8800 series you will
want 30 amps on the +12 rail so consider the CORSAIR 750TX for
$180. |
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Nice quiet 120mm fan and modular outputs for clean case interiors. |
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Asus P5K-E
$142
Now we gotta plug that power supply into something. The motherboard you
purchase should have what is called an "8-Phase Power Design".
You can read about it here:
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2589&p=2. Thus
the power supply needs an 8 socket connector in addition to the
24 socket ATX 2.0 one that is common.
The Asus
P5K-E with the Intel P35 chipset gets
you
PCI Express x16 video card support and fast
DDR2 667 RAM access. The South Bridge Intel ICH9R provides Sata II Raid. 8-channel HD audio, 1394a firewire and Gigabit LAN are also
on board. Please note that the shipping BIOS is
version 0703. We had stability problems with 0807 and 0901.
The one downside to this board is the lack of ECC memory that
the P35 fails to support. Perhaps next year Intel will have
decided the average user could use this feature with 8GB RAM
becoming common. |
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This is where your Quad core is cradled in the Intel 775 Socket pattern. |
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Intel Q6600 SLACR $280
Now what good is a mainboard without a kickin' processor? The Intel
Q6600 SLACR ends the drought of waiting for
something really useful to come along. Say hello to Quad-Core!
Basically it is four processors that are all smashed like a
sandwich onto one socket. Very nice. This beats the old days
where four processors were scattered about on a very large
motherboard and used a lot more electricity.
With four processors you could have one dedicated to moving the mouse, one
decided to surfing the web, another one dedicated to playing
your favorite song, and yet another one for umm, whatever you
want! Of course you will be much more productive than that. Some
of the work we do here processes 500 files at a time. With four
cores now it is
500/4 = 125 per processor. This has taken some jobs from 3 hours
down to 15 minutes from an old single core 1Ghz processor
system! That is 1.8 seconds per file vs. 22.6 on the old system!
On a Quad-Core system you can force software to use only one
processor. Obviously our software takes advantage of four
processors. What would our job time be if it did not use four
cores? One processor processed a file in 7.8 seconds (65
minutes over 500 files).
So from that number we can get an idea of the Ghz speed
improvements. A 2.4Ghz processor is 2.08 times faster (twice as
fast) than our old 1Ghz system. So 22.6/2.08 = 10.9 seconds. But
why are we getting 7.8 seconds which is still faster? Most
likely improvements in the system bus speed from processor to
ram and hard drive etc. It would take a 4Ghz dual core processor
to equal our current 2.4Ghz Quad core. What do you think that
would
cost? Not $280 that is for sure. The Intel Q6600 SLACR is the
best use of your money right now. |
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We apply a better heat sink compound than what the retail
box ships with. |
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Asus EN8600GT Silent $140
With DVI (excellent color calibrating support) and 512mb RAM
this video card is
all we need. The type of work we do does not really
require more than 64mb of video RAM if using Windows XP or an
older operating system. If we go to Vista, which will make use
of Video RAM, we went ahead and put something toward that. It
will not meet
the demands of DirectX 10 games however. For that you will need the nVida
8800GTS for $350 and a better power supply such as the CORSAIR
750TX $180.
Most video cards these days use a fan to
cool them. Our system however is to be seen and not heard. The
tradeoff was a huge heat sink which makes the card take up two
slots. The heat sink alone is not enough to cool the card so we
attached a 120mm 1,000rpm fan for quiet cooling for a total of
three slots used. |
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Crucial 4GB DDR2 667
$130
We only buy Crucial brand memory.
We are a bit of a snob on this point too. There is faster
memory, there is prettier memory, but rarely as stable. Crucial
makes sure that the memory you buy works and you can avoid the
time consuming RMA process other brands make you endure as you
QC their product for them.
The model shown here is the CT2KIT25664AA667 which is two DDR2
667 (PC2 5300) sticks supplying 4GB of system memory. Why the
slowest DDR2 spec? If you want real memory performance you will
have to wait for the second release of DDR3. In our opinion
everything else is not a good return on investment. |
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Western Digital WD5000AAKS
$105
What is the slowest component in your computer system? The hard drive.
Can't live with em, can't live with out em. This is the one area
we really penny pinched. You could do much better than our
choice but be prepared to spend $500 more! This 7,200rpm, 500GB
with a 16mb cache Western Digital WD5000AAKS with Sata II interface is a
cheap, quiet, and energy efficient way to store files.
The type of work we do is not disk intensive, just processor and
RAM intensive. If your writing more than 16mb of data per second
you will want a dedicated RAID controller. 3ware RAID cards with
256MB write cache and higher will take the wait out of writes!
For reads look for faster RPM and bigger Christmas bonuses. |
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DVD/CD
$40
We went with light scribe support (burning an image to the front of the
disk for show). Nothing to see here. Wait for the Blu-ray vs. HD
DVD outcome over the next few years. |
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Windows
XP x64 Edition $140
In order to use more than 4GB of RAM you
need a 64bit processor and a 64bit Operating system. You can use
4GB RAM on a 32bit OS but it is not stable. x64 is a requirement
for our systems because of how Windows allocates 32bit software.
Each 32bit executable gets access to a full 2GB memory space.
On 32bit versions of Windows your total RAM minus 1GB is available
to applications thus it is difficult to run multiple
applications each having access to 2GB RAM. Of course virtual
memory in the form of hard disk paging is available if you like
watching your hard drive activity light. We want direct access
to memory not the page file. |
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Antec P180B v1.1 $130
You have spent this much so you might as well get a sweet case to house it all.
The Antec P180B (identical to the P182 in function) caught our
eye with it's simple clean lines. Then it massaged our ears with
it quite sound dampening panels and 120mm fans throughout. This
case lives up to its "without compromise" catch phrase. We
did fill the two optional 120m fan slots with Scythe
S-FLEX SFF21D 120mm case fans. We placed the default top mounted Antec tri-cool fan on the video card and put the Scythe in its
place. This lowered the noise level a good deal as the top
mounted fan has the shortest access to our ears. We also RMA'd
the front USB ports as static charge would reboot the PC. |
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S-IPS LCD Monitors $450
Please, please we beg you, buy a quality display. You have no idea what your
missing and we cringe at what your seeing even looking at our
website. Only buy LCD S-IPS panels. This is a technology not a
brand. Currently they are only available in 20", 24" and
higher sizes. 22" models need to be avoided like the plague.
S-IPS panels provide you with:
*
Wide gamut color range so that you
will see all the colors a jpeg file allows.
* Colors will not change when
viewing from the side
or even different sections.
* Can be accurately calibrated
such that prints match what is shown onscreen.
Currently
we are using Dell 2005FPW 20.1" wide screen displays. Not the
best S-IPS panels but a good investment none the less. With a
maximum pixel dimension of 1050 for the height they are not the
best for editing HD video. For that you should consider a 30"
display with 1600 for it's maximum height. This gives you
1600-1080 = 520 pixels for toolbar and start button controls as
well as the original HD content. |
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Conclusion
There you have it. The best use of your money for 2008
computing. See ya next year! |
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