Building new PC, computer dorks roll call

[ZbornacSVT]

Alright.....been a few years since I done one of these. Anything new to the process I should know about? My case should show tomorrow with the rest of the bits arriving throughout the week.

I'm game for any pointers anyone has!

 

[lovemywoods]

Alright.....been a few years since I done one of these. Anything new to the process I should know about? My case should show tomorrow with the rest of the bits arriving throughout the week.

I'm game for any pointers anyone has!

OK, is that a computer geek pun?

 

[ZbornacSVT]

not intentional....

 

[Dargasonus]

What are your plans? I haven't built a computer for about 3 years or so, and even then I used out dated bargain parts to build a budget gamer.

 

[ZbornacSVT]

I kind of went retarded on the build this go round. Need a little more grunt to keep up with some of the business tasks I do. All that and Newegg offered me a $5600 credit limit with no interest...good thing I didn't know that when I put my shopping cart together!

I don't want to ruin all the surprises, but it is a Sandy Bridge build

 

[Fenway]

Will this be more powerful than the iPad?

 

[Dargasonus]

Nice! I love newegg, when I built this PC they had everything at my door in 3 days with free shipping.

 

[kwatters]

Not sure what you are looking for, sounds like the hardware is in place. I would go with 64 bit Windows 7 for sure.

 

[ZbornacSVT]

Will this be more powerful than the iPad?

but a little less mobile

Not sure what you are looking for, sounds like the hardware is in place. I would go with 64 bit Windows 7 for sure.

I guess what I would really love some help with is doing all the stability checks and whatnot on the front end. I have never really done that stuff before, but really want to do this thing right and have some baselines before I start cranking on her. Prime95 and all that other crap.

This is also my first WC build, so I plan on doing some OC'ing as well....

Win 7 Pro 64-bit was tossed in the cart.

 

[ZbornacSVT]

Win7 a straightforward install?

Oh, and being a business build....this is getting some cosmetic touches as well. Black and Red for everyone!!

 

[dhnorris]

big drives are cheap RAID should be a must and maybe off site backup as well. Two monitors rock as well.

 

[Bunnykid68]

Newegg rocks

 

[Don]

Ram lots of it ddr3 is CHEAP, and screw AMD they suck!

 

[Cru]

I’d just skip the win7 and instal OSX. It’ll run on a PC build.

 

[revsaxon]

I guess what I would really love some help with is doing all the stability checks and whatnot on the front end. I have never really done that stuff before, but really want to do this thing right and have some baselines before I start cranking on her. Prime95 and all that other crap.

Can't help you with windows, as the most I have touched it in the last 10 years was to set up a basic XP box to manage our ESX hosts (Why VMWare insists on NOT releasing a vmclient for anything but windows boggles my mind), but for stability checks and basic burn-in tests, its hard to beat a linux distro called stresslinux. Basically its a stripped down operating system designed specifically for testing/burning in new systems. SOP at my company is to run a new server thru most of the various tests in it for 24-48 hours before deploying to production (after a real OS load of course). If you choose to go down that route and need any help feel free to drop me a PM.

 

[henktermaat]

I build one every 5 years. I find that I have to re-research all of the latest stuff each time

IT's fun though.

 

[ZbornacSVT]

big drives are cheap RAID should be a must and maybe off site backup as well. Two monitors rock as well.

I am going with a SSD for the main drive, but not sure if I want to go RAID yet. My thinking is the 80% performance increase over SATA will be enough until prices on the SSDs become more realistic....SSD are cheaper than they were, but still Should be worth every penny, though.

Ram lots of it ddr3 is CHEAP, and screw AMD they suck!

16GB matched set and an i7 2600K

Can't help you with windows, as the most I have touched it in the last 10 years was to set up a basic XP box to manage our ESX hosts (Why VMWare insists on NOT releasing a vmclient for anything but windows boggles my mind), but for stability checks and basic burn-in tests, its hard to beat a linux distro called stresslinux. Basically its a stripped down operating system designed specifically for testing/burning in new systems. SOP at my company is to run a new server thru most of the various tests in it for 24-48 hours before deploying to production (after a real OS load of course). If you choose to go down that route and need any help feel free to drop me a PM.

I may have to hit you up on that.
Thanks.

 

[Magneto]

No AMD me no care.

 

[! twitty]

I am graduation in a week for IT. If you need any help feel free to send me a message and I will do my best to help!

 

[revsaxon]

I am going with a SSD for the main drive, but not sure if I want to go RAID yet. My thinking is the 80% performance increase over SATA will be enough until prices on the SSDs become more realistic....SSD are cheaper than they were, but still Should be worth every penny, though.

SSD as your boot/application drive with a large raid array for long term storage. No point storing lots of data on a SSD, it just sits there eating up space that could otherwise be used for more [game|software|whatever]. Make sure you raid your main storage though as a corrupt hard-drive will take everything with it (happens a LOT more than we would like to admit :/). Raid != backups, but thats another story.

Also, make sure you get a current generation SSD, as the older ones are cheaper, but many do not support TRIM, and without that you will see MARKED performance degradation over time (assuming your OS supports it, which I would ::assume:: Windows-7 does).