OK, PC Blew Up, Need Build Advice

[chimera15]

Dang, that's an expensive 1156 board.  Why wouldn't you wan to go 1366?  The processor becomes too expensive? Course everyone on this board will just suggest you go amd. lol


Amazed to hear that your processor blew up.  Glad I didn't decide to push mine that far.

I'd definitely go with an ssd for the main system drive.  120g meaning gb? or is that a stat?  You don't need 120 gb, you can get away with as little as 16gb for your system drive, then just dump a cheap 500 gb or 1 tera sata in the system where most of your big video and data files will be.  I like 16gb system drives cause they're easy to backup as well.   I have mostly 64gb ssd drives, and I have a ton of programs and I usually max out with all my apps and usually a couple of installed games around 50gb.

Oh and you probably want to stay away from mlc ssds if you can, and go with slc.  If you can drop down to 64 or even 32 and get an slc instead of an mlc you'd probably be happier for it, and it should make a big difference in video editing.  The intel ssds haven't gotten good reviews.  I have one of them, because it was affordable, mainly probably because of the bad reviews.   I'd go with ocz, they have cooler packaging too. lol


Or white label.


http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/flash-ssd-hard-drive,2000-7.html


http://cgi.ebay.com/Samsung-Slim-64GB-SLC-SSD-uSATA-hard-drive-HDD-/260690667646?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cb25fe87e

Actually for some reason this drive has horrible read write speeds...so the newer mlc drives actually outperform it, but the slc drive probably does have a longer life at least.

[Phaedrus2129]

Check out Biostar's P67 board, they've really improved since the olden days when they were mediocre second stringers. Their board is comparable to that Asus, and it's a solid value.

An SSD will actually make a huge difference with video editing, since one of the main bottlenecks with that is writing to the hard drive. With a video over 0:30 90% of your data is going to be in your page file at any given time, so being able to swap that in and out quickly will make things a lot faster. Then you can get a cheap 1TB storage drive.

If you need advice on PSUs I'm your man. What GPU will you be using?

[Phaedrus2129]

Well check and make sure the Silencer hasn't died, as it could have been a power supply failure that caused the issue and fried the board. Silencers don't fail catastrophically often, but it does happen. If you look to get a new PSU, the Antec NeoECO 520C is one of the better values right now especially after rebate; if you want to go the luxury route get a SeaSonic X.


A 120GB SSD will be fine for Windows; I'm running that on a 60GB. Keep in mind that SSDs do have a finite life cycle when it comes to writes, the speed comes with a tradeoff. Keep a backup image of that drive, refresh it every month or so. That SSD should last you a good long while but it will eventually fail if you do tons of editing every day.

[majestouch]

I normally don't keep up on this stuff, but my aging Athlon workstation of 5 years is acting up so I've done a little reading lately; I don't game, but I need something that can fly through CaptureOne, Illustrator, and some CAD. So my 2cents...

You might consider the Asus P67 Sabertooth, which has a 5 year warranty; better spec'd components might equate to it having a better chance of *not* blowing up like your last mobo did;) Yes, the Deluxe has a second LAN and the NF200 Northbridge (word is they run hot anyway); the former is easily remedied, and the latter isn't necessary since you aren't doing multi-vid cards.

Wait a few weeks on the SSDs, Micron and Intel are bringing out new platforms next month (supposedly). Alternatively, while you wait, if you have good HDDs lying around, you might look into matching them up for RAID 0 & 1 for faster disk performance.

[majestouch]

I normally don't keep up on this stuff, but my aging Athlon workstation of 5 years is acting up so I've done a little reading lately; I don't game, but I need something that can fly through CaptureOne, Illustrator, and some CAD. So my 2cents...

You might consider the Asus P67 Sabertooth, which has a 5 year warranty; better spec'd components might equate to it having a better chance of *not* blowing up like your last mobo did;) Yes, the Deluxe has a second LAN and the NF200 Northbridge (word is they run hot anyway); the former is easily remedied, and the latter isn't necessary since you aren't doing multi-vid cards.

Wait a few weeks on the SSDs, Micron and Intel are bringing out new platforms next month (supposedly). Alternatively, while you wait, if you have good HDDs lying around, you might look into matching them up for RAID 0 & 1 for faster disk performance.

[JelinaNU]

Check out MSI's new line of mil-spec motherboards. I think they're impressive. This is the 1155 socket version. (Here's the Newegg link for comparative purposes.)

I know that Asus is the staple and benchmark for motherboards these days, but I did exhaustive research before getting my new rig. Everything pointed at MSI being rock solid. The touted benefits of their new boards could be seen as the same kind of marketingspeak Geekhack regularly punishes keyboard manufacturers for, yes. Their flourish not withstanding, though, initial acid tests have been favorable.

I'm one of those people with an entropic touc- Strike that. An entropic field. I crash or explode computers simply by walking by or, Gods forbid, touching one; so any tech designed to be more durable automatically has my attention. While you might not have my particular...ability, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you use your rigs far more often and more rigorously than the "end user" most components are designed for.

[Lanx]

120g is way fine, I run with a 60g, win 7 and a few office apps will take up 25g or so, 15g along for win7. Of course I always stress that this is a boot drive, keep all data files, pics/videos on a seperate regular harddrive.
really any ssd now with a sandforce 1200/1500 controller should be awesome, along with the one by crucial the real300
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148348


for motherboards i personally go for gigabyte and biostar on the cheaper end.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128463

[chimera15]

Well check and make sure the Silencer hasn't died, as it could have been a power supply failure that caused the issue and fried the board. Silencers don't fail catastrophically often, but it does happen. If you look to get a new PSU, the Antec NeoECO 520C is one of the better values right now especially after rebate; if you want to go the luxury route get a SeaSonic X.


A 120GB SSD will be fine for Windows; I'm running that on a 60GB. Keep in mind that SSDs do have a finite life cycle when it comes to writes, the speed comes with a tradeoff. Keep a backup image of that drive, refresh it every month or so. That SSD should last you a good long while but it will eventually fail if you do tons of editing every day.

slcs are calculated under average-heavy load to have a 50+ year lifespan.  mlc's 5-10. lol

That way outperforms any standard hd I've ever owned.  As far as I'm concerned there's no real trade off.  I've had hd's die on me out of nowhere with no warning in under a year.   I've owned several ssds now for over a year, and there are utilities now that measure their wear rate and none of them are lower than 90% health.

[kriminal]

go intel ssd's

[Phaedrus2129]

slcs are calculated under average-heavy load to have a 50+ year lifespan.  mlc's 5-10. lol

That way outperforms any standard hd I've ever owned.  As far as I'm concerned there's no real trade off.  I've had hd's die on me out of nowhere with no warning in under a year.   I've owned several ssds now for over a year, and there are utilities now that measure their wear rate and none of them are lower than 90% health.

Yes, but do you use it for constant i/o swapping for video editing? I'm putting it out as an option, but I really do have concerns about long term durability.


Of course he could go for an SLC SSD:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167029&cm_re=slc_ssd-_-20-167-029-_-Product


But of course, if you're going that far you might as well go all the way, eh?
http://=http://www.ramsan.com/products/18

I'm actually not sure how much the RAM SAN 20 costs, but at Siggraph 2009 I was quoted "about $15,000". Worth it for microsecond latency and more bandwidth than god though.

[ch_123]

I'm going to facetiously suggest a PC300 running Windows 3.1 before someone mentions it in a serious way.

Keep in mind that SSDs do have a finite life cycle when it comes to writes

And magnetic drives have mean time between failures. Hell, my hard drive has come closer to death in the time I've typed this, even though I'm not using it!

[keyb_gr]

When comparing mo/bos, I'd prefer the one with lots of them solid state caps.

That doesn't save you from a crappy BIOS support policy, but at least they shouldn't have skimped on components then.

[bigpook]

I got a 30G OCD SSD for the operating system and it is fast. I created a Ram disk for /var/tmp, /var/log and /tmp to keep from constantly writing to the SSD.

I use 3 250G Seagates in a Raid 0 configuration for /home and the array is almost as fast as the SSD.

[Brian8bit]

For what you want I'd get a six core AMD and spunk on the RAM and graphics if it's mostly image and video editing.

2600k is complete overkill for anything but a hardcore gaming rig. And then you mentioned you MIGHT overclock it. The downside is sandybridge is quite delicate when it comes to overclocking. So much so that on the OCuK forums there were reports of the chips dying left and right when they were released. Turns out if you pump to much juice through them you'll kill them outright or severely limit the lifespan. 1.38v being the absolute limit of what you should be putting through them according to Intel and OCuK. And then there's really not much point in overclocking them anyway when turbo boost will do it for you. Ok it won't clock them to mid 4's, but turbo boost won't kill your chip faster than you can rub one out over getting several more frames in your FPS game.

[keyboardlover]

I think the 120gb SSD is fine so long as you have a much larger secondary storage elsewhere (for backups, large files, etc.) I have a 120gb SSD but to keep it performing well I always backup and move large files off to my external 2tb drive.

[Phaedrus2129]

I don't know about SB's survivability rate, but people on OCN have been able to OC them to 4.5-5.0GHz without too much difficulty. And the performance clock-per-clock is much greater than a Phenom II X6, which generally compete more with the older Nehalem architecture.


As for graphics, that has no impact on video editing. Graphics cards are for 3D gaming and that's it, unless you have something massively parallel to run and you can code CUDA or OpenCL... Well, you really just can't GPU accelerate video editing. Anything with regular video acceleration (ie. GeForce 8 and Radeon HD2000 and up) should do the trick, you could do it with a GeForce 9100.

I do agree on splurging on RAM.

[keyboardlover]

Yea, I'd say 8 gb DDR3 would be good. Make sure you get the 64 bit version of windows 7 to take advantage of it.

[Brian8bit]

Getting to 5 is solely down to the chip. It's not recommended to run it at 5Ghz, especially if you're putting more than 1.38v through it to achieve it. Sure, it'll do for a CPU-Z screenshot. But it'll more than likely kill your chip.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18227651

Ultimately it comes down to whether or not you're willing to pay Intel's extortionate pricing to achieve something quicker in a couple of seconds that is usually unnoticeable to the end user unless the specific task is incredibly CPU intensive. Me, personally? I'd go AMD and make myself a cup of coffee while I wait for something to render. Spend what I save on some nice coffee and cuban cigars.

[Phaedrus2129]

A word on solid caps vs. electrolytics. Solid caps are more reliable and heat resistant, true, but also have a much lower maximum charge capacity, and are also much larger for that capacity. And more expensive and such.

A mobo's VRMs are basically DC-DC power supplies, and they need capacitors for charge reservoirs and pi filters. For reservoir caps the manufacturer might have to put a couple of solid caps in parallel to meet the capacity of one electrolytic cap. And in the pi filters, having higher capacitance will allow you to tune your filter to eliminate more unwanted signal (EMI and ripple), so having polymer capacitors may mean less filtering capacity.


There's a lot of trade-offs involved.

[Brian8bit]

I think the only time I'd care that something rendered or compiled 5 minutes quicker was if I was in a production environment and it was important to my wage. And even then I might still go AMD.

[speakeasy]

I bought a MSI motherboard for my current computer, and I'm pretty happy with it. They advertise as using "military grade" components, though I'm not sure what that means exactly other than a buzzword for marketing. As far as I can tell though, it's had less problems than the Gigabyte board I had previously which I had to RMA after like 2 weeks of owning it.

[MissileMike]

Ultimately it comes down to whether or not you're willing to pay Intel's extortionate pricing to achieve something quicker in a couple of seconds that is usually unnoticeable to the end user unless the specific task is incredibly CPU intensive. Me, personally? I'd go AMD and make myself a cup of coffee while I wait for something to render. Spend what I save on some nice coffee and cuban cigars.

Extortionate pricing?  Bang/buck, the 2500k and 2600k are absolutely fantastic.

[Computer-Lab in Basement]

So I'm on my trusty old DFI LanParty X48 and Q6700 @ 3.6 downstairs PC for about 5 minutes after power on and POOF!  Off goes the PC and I get a good sniff of burnt electronics.  Pull it out and put on my HSPC tech station with a spare power supply and confirm it's the motherboard (or maybe the chip -  am not sure how to tell).

Just out of curiosity, do you have a probable cause of death for that PC?  Last I knew computers don't usually have spontaneous catastrophic failures like that without some sort of reasoning behind it...

[Brian8bit]

Extortionate pricing?  Bang/buck, the 2500k and 2600k are absolutely fantastic.

Yes. They're good. But they're not the best bang for buck chips. That's strictly AMD territory. What's really stupid though is the mark up on the 2600 to the 2600k. So the 2600k has an unlocked multiplier. But as I've mentioned that's useless anyway since you can't put 1.38v through the chip without damaging it or killing it. You might as well save yourself the money and get the 2600 without the unlocked multiplier if you are going to go Intel. What multiplier tweaking is available in the standard chip should be more than enough to achieve what the K series can, safely. Everything after is **** waving suicide runs.

[MissileMike]

Yes. They're good. But they're not the best bang for buck chips. That's strictly AMD territory. What's really stupid though is the mark up on the 2600 to the 2600k. So the 2600k has an unlocked multiplier. But as I've mentioned that's useless anyway since you can't put 1.38v through the chip without damaging it or killing it. You might as well save yourself the money and get the 2600 without the unlocked multiplier if you are going to go Intel. What multiplier tweaking is available in the standard chip should be more than enough to achieve what the K series can, safely. Everything after is **** waving suicide runs.

You can go really, really fast with 1.35v.

I personally would get a 2500k.  It's the fastest chip available at 225$ and then you could add the better ram/video like you would with a x6 1090t.

[hfcobra]

this may be a llittle late, but get a C300 for your SSD, it is the fastest on the market right now.   At least for one that you dont have to spend an insane amount of money for.  Plus it is in 128GB so you get a little extra space for all your stuff!

I have one and it is FAST!

[hfcobra]

Yes. They're good. But they're not the best bang for buck chips. That's strictly AMD territory. What's really stupid though is the mark up on the 2600 to the 2600k. So the 2600k has an unlocked multiplier. But as I've mentioned that's useless anyway since you can't put 1.38v through the chip without damaging it or killing it. You might as well save yourself the money and get the 2600 without the unlocked multiplier if you are going to go Intel. What multiplier tweaking is available in the standard chip should be more than enough to achieve what the K series can, safely. Everything after is **** waving suicide runs.

the new Sandy Bridge CPUs ONLY overclock by changing the multi.  Otherwise you will fry the Motherboard, its just how these things work.

ripster if you are going to overclock you should not change the BCLK unless you want something to die prematurely like the PCI slots.  They dont like being overclocked and they are now directly tied to the BCLK so you cannot increase that more than a few points if that.

[Phaedrus2129]

I'm seeing 2500Ks and 2600Ks on OCN at 4.8GHz at 1.32-1.38V, and a 5GHz at 1.39V. Seems to me they overclock pretty well regardless. I've made a thread asking about durability as well.


Edit: Oh-oh

been 3 weeks at 1.42v for me, and no issues at all. Ive had it over 1.5 for some 5ghz runs as well, hasn't missed a beat.

3weeks at 1.475v & 4.8ghz no issues

Not looking good for the "Sandy Bridge are crap" theory.

[instantkamera]

BTW I ordered everything including the Intel SSD.

I love my ****!

Sorry Im too late, but which Intel SSD (x25-m I hope)? I have one of the new Corsair sandforce, they rip.

Also, in general, AMD IS the VALUE choice (price/performance) right now:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_alltime.html

Not to say that Intel doesnt have some good values going on, it just seems like their pricing structure is out of wack between models.

My latest box is an AMD, and it absolutely smokes. On top of that, with the $$ I saved on the proc I got a top of the line board, tons of RAM, SSD and 2x WD caviar blacks.

Anyway, it's all good. Let us know how the build goes.

[Brian8bit]

I'm seeing 2500Ks and 2600Ks on OCN at 4.8GHz at 1.32-1.38V, and a 5GHz at 1.39V. Seems to me they overclock pretty well regardless. I've made a thread asking about durability as well.


Edit: Oh-oh





Not looking good for the "Sandy Bridge are crap" theory.

Yes. I saw your thread. Nowhere did I say they would consistently die. Only that it had been reported to OCuK that chips where dropping like crazy. They got in contact with Intel. Who recommended no more than 1.38v through the chips. Which was again stated in the overclockers thread I linked to. And also I never said you couldn't achieve over 4Ghz on less than 1.38v. I've seen plenty under in mid 4's and high 4's.

Way to word your thread on OCN to make it sound like I was a clueless **** though. Appreciated.

[Phaedrus2129]

At OCN it doesn't sound like a single chip has died so far.

[hfcobra]

Hmm.... Crucial C300 Does look a Tad faster, but not always.

the only tests it lost were in a gaming benchmark, it is much faster for everything so long as it is connected to SATA 6GB/s, in games it is about 1FPS slower it seems, but that is not big deal.   You dont but a SSD for anything other than faster load times when you are talking about games  

Plus, some of those wins are pretty substantial, the 4K random read and write were quite a bit faster.  While using a computer in non-gaming or editing situations 99% of the time you will be doing 4K random reads/writes.  Like browsing the web or just opening a program.

[hfcobra]

all right, fair enough.   I have heard rumors of RAM that does not require power to store memory in the near future anyways.  Now THAT would be cool!  It would be the new storage option for people who need everything to happen instantly  

[manfaux]

maybe wait till the next gen 25nm SSDs come out? They should be out for retail in a couple months, that's what I'm getting, and meanwhile just bear with your old drives.

[DanGWanG]

There's a shell shocker on the OCZ Vertex 2 120GB SSD right now:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?nm_mc=AFC-SlickDeals&cm_mmc=AFC-SlickDeals-_-NA-_-NA-_-NA&Item=N82E16820227551

$170 after $30 MIR.  Won't be up for long.

[instantkamera]

And the Intel SSD and CPU?  Gotta prop up iMav's INTC stock.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/31/intel-finds-sandy-bridge-chipset-design-flaw-shipments-stopped/


annnd down it goes again

[DanGWanG]

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/31/intel-finds-sandy-bridge-chipset-design-flaw-shipments-stopped/


annnd down it goes again

Lol!  Was just going to post this for Ripster from DailyTech...

http://www.dailytech.com/Intel+Finds+Design+Flaw+in+New+Sandy+Bridge+Chipset/article20789.htm

$1 Billion dollar f*ck up.  Fun times Intel.

[ch_123]

Hopefully you won't bump into this stuff.

[Mazora]

Guys, this thread is getting so interesting !

I'm about to get rid of my P4P800 motherboard anytime soon this month, hence I'm reading here and there anything about pc building.

Question: Is the installation of the OS on a 120GB SSD more "difficult" than on a traditional HD ? I mean, is it meant for pc building guru ? And in term of speed difference (mainly read), how much faster is a SSD compared with a 10,000 rpm harddrive?

Thx and have a good one,

Max

[Supergleep]

Guys, this thread is getting so interesting !
Question: Is the installation of the OS on a 120GB SSD more "difficult" than on a traditional HD ? I mean, is it meant for pc building guru ? And in term of speed difference (mainly read), how much faster is a SSD compared with a 10,000 rpm harddrive?
Max

SSD's are literally an order of magnitude difference from a 10,000 RPM spindle drive. Anecdotally, I recently upgraded from a 150GB Raptor 10k drive to a Micron C300 128GB SSD and the Windows and application load times are VERY noticeable. It makes a large difference in performance.

What's even more notable is when you move back to a computer that doesn't have an SSD, it feels like it's crawling by comparison.

As far as difficulty of installation, functionally, they work exactly like a regular SATA harddrive. One thing to note is that you may need to get a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter if your current case doesn't make provision for a 2.5" drive (laptop sized)

Ripster, another vote here for the Micron C300 SSD. Love mine and no issues whatsoever.

[Phaedrus2129]

SSD acts just like an HDD. Except sometimes (occasionally) in laptops or pre-built systems where they **** around with the motherboard BIOS and break something. But if you're building a system from scratch there should be no difficulty.

[DanGWanG]

Guys, this thread is getting so interesting !

I'm about to get rid of my P4P800 motherboard anytime soon this month, hence I'm reading here and there anything about pc building.

Question: Is the installation of the OS on a 120GB SSD more "difficult" than on a traditional HD ? I mean, is it meant for pc building guru ? And in term of speed difference (mainly read), how much faster is a SSD compared with a 10,000 rpm harddrive?

Thx and have a good one,

Max

The newer motherboards and updated BIOS can automatically detect SSD drives just like PATA/SATA drives.  So the installation shouldn't be any harder in terms of OS installation.

When it comes to speed difference, it is much noticeably faster.  I don't have quantitative numbers off the top of my head, but your typical Windows 7 boot-up time on a 10k rpm drive probably takes about 60+ seconds.  On a good SSD, under 30 seconds.  Performance will vary on applications within Windows, but will typically always be faster on an SSD.

[Phaedrus2129]

The newer motherboards and updated BIOS can automatically detect SSD drives just like PATA/SATA drives.  So the installation shouldn't be any harder in terms of OS installation.

When it comes to speed difference, it is much noticeably faster.  I don't have quantitative numbers off the top of my head, but your typical Windows 7 boot-up time on a 10k rpm drive probably takes about 60+ seconds.  On a good SSD, under 30 seconds.  Performance will vary on applications within Windows, but will typically always be faster on an SSD.

<10 second boot times here. That's from the end of the POST process to a usable desktop. And my SSD isn't exceptionally fast.

POST takes about fifteen seconds, and if I jiggered around a bit (move CD drive down in boot priority) I could get it down to ten. So hit power, and twenty seconds later I'll have a usable desktop.



Not that it matters much, since my morning ritual usually goes:
1.) Wake up
2.) Hit PC power switch
3.) Use toilet
4.) Brush teeth
5.) Check email

[Mazora]

OKkkk, thx alot ! I'm convinced about SSD now !

[EverythingIBM]

Look no farther Ripster, here is the computer for you:
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/x/hardware/tower/index.html

Six-core Intel® Xeon® up to two X5680 3.33 GHz or four-core Intel® Xeon® X5677 3.46 GHz with 12 MB of cache per processor socket

yum... .mmmmmmm.

[Lanx]

best utility for ssd is ssdtweak
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?49779-SSD-Tweak-Utility
works for any ssd, just that ocz forums are basically the leaders in ssd stuff imo. Once you install you ssd and have windows booted up run this once and you don't have to worry about all those "extra" settings to get real ssd performance.

[TexasFlood]

Look no farther Ripster, here is the computer for you:
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/x/hardware/tower/index.html

yum... .mmmmmmm.

If you can live with a rack mount server, why not consider the x3755 M3?  Up to four 2.3 GHz 12-core AMD Opteron 6000 Series processors, for up to 48 cores in a 2U form factor.

[J888www]

Not much to advise really, I'm waiting for a few Months before I config a new build. Maybe configure and no build, as yet undecided. Spent far too much £££ this Year, also finally upgraded my Camera with a purchase of an Olympus XZ1, not sure if the online retailer can deliver soon as the Release Date is proposed on March 1st. Suppose if the Camera isn't shipped, I can always go for a latest generation SSD instead.

[Brian8bit]

What's 775 Xeon performance like compared to newer Core i* chips? You can pick up a lot of old 775 servers with one or two processors cheaply enough now so I'd be interested to know how they perform against i5's and i7's.

[TexasFlood]

Hmm...rack mounts.

Pack 'em in there!


Just need a little cash...