Revised build - wondering about cooling and cutting costs?

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enhorning

Member
Just a few last queries before I place my order.

Here is my build as it currently stands:
Case - COOLERMASTER HAF-X FULL TOWER GAMING CASE (£149)
Processor (CPU) - Intel® Core™i7 Six Core Processor i7-970 (3.20GHz) 6.4GTs/12MB Cache
Motherboard - ASUS® P6X58D-E: DDR3, USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, 3-Way SLI
Memory (RAM) - 12GB KINGSTON HYPERX TRI-DDR3 1600MHz, INTEL X.M.P (6 x 2GB KIT)
Graphics Card - 1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX460 GDDR5 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11
Free Item - FREE Just Cause 2 Game (RRP: £34.99) with any GTX 4xx Series GPU!
Memory - 1st Hard Disk - 1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive - 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
2nd DVD/BLU-RAY Drive - 10x BLU-RAY ROM DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£59)
Power Supply & Case Cooling - CORSAIR 850W PSU (TX850) 80+ ULTRA QUIET (£100)
Processor Cooling - COOLIT ECO C240 A.L.C (ADVANCED LIQUID COOLER) (£95)
Operating System - Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£108)
Surge Protection - Belkin 8-Socket 2M SurgeMaster with £175,000 Protection Warranty! (£18)
Warranty - 3 Year Platinum Warranty (3 Year Collect & Return, Lifetime Tech Support) (£135)
Delivery - STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time - Standard Build - Approximately 7 to 9 working days

Price for this PC System: £2123 inc VAT and Delivery.

The computer will be mainly used for (24/7) cpu-intensive calculations, along with a bit of occasional gaming and movie-watching.

Is this the best and quietest option for good cooling? Or would the Titan Fenrir be quieter? Or the smaller Coolit?

If I were to try to cut down the cost, but still keep the computer as future-proof as possible, what could I possibly downgrade? Ideally, I would like to get the cost down to £1900-£2000 (... in order to be able to afford a new screen as well). Otherwise, leaving it as it is works too.

Would there be any possibility of PC Specialist getting me a different power supply that is not on the list? As the computer will be always on, I would ideally have liked a very efficient PSU - Corsair HX 750 or 850 were my thoughts.

Very much looking forward to getting a new computer... I think my current one might refuse to start any day now... it is not sounding healthy at all.
 
E

enhorning

Member
PCS said:
To reduce the price somewhat you could change the i7-970 to an overclocked i7-930
Click to expand...
No, that's definitely not an option - I will need as many cores as possible. (If I could have afforded it, I would have gone for a 12-core xeon setup... I can definitely take advantage of more cores!)

I am considering going down to 6gb of memory though... that cuts the cost down quite a bit.
 
E

enhorning

Member
I've looked at that site - annoyingly, that list of features is incomplete.

The feature I want Win Pro for is Remote Desktop hosting.
 
PCS

PCS

Administrator
Staff member
No problem. Other than your suggestion about the RAM then any other changes would start to eat into the core specification...
 
Meds

Meds

Moderator
Moderator
Ok, how about this? *changes in bold

Case - COOLERMASTER HAF-922 FULL TOWER GAMING CASE (£149)
Processor (CPU) - Intel® Core™i7 Six Core Processor i7-970 (3.20GHz)6.4GTs/12MB Cache
Motherboard - ASUS® P6X58D-E: DDR3, USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, 3-Way SLI
Memory (RAM) - 12GB KINGSTON HYPERX TRI-DDR3 1600MHz, INTEL X.M.P (6 x 2GB KIT)
Graphics Card - 1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX460 GDDR5 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11
Free Item - FREE Just Cause 2 Game (RRP: £34.99) with any GTX 4xx Series GPU!
Memory - 1st Hard Disk - 1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive - NONE ±R/±RW/RAM
2nd DVD/BLU-RAY Drive - 10x BLU-RAY ROM DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£59)
Power Supply & Case Cooling - CORSAIR 650W PSU (TX850) 80+ ULTRA QUIET (£100)
Processor Cooling - COOLIT ECO C240 A.L.C (ADVANCED LIQUID COOLER) (£95)
Operating System - Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£108)
Surge Protection - Belkin 8-Socket 2M SurgeMaster with £175,000 Protection Warranty! (£18)
Warranty - 3 Year Platinum Warranty (3 Year Collect & Return, Lifetime Tech Support) (£135)
Delivery - STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time - Standard Build - Approximately 7 to 9 working days

Current Price for this PC System: £1973 inc VAT and Delivery.

I have changed a couple of things;

Case: HAF922 - to be honest you can save yourself alot of money going for the HAF-X 's baby brother. It's still excellent for cooling, upgrades, storage etc.

DVD: Unless you plan to write from disc to disc, you wont need the DVD-RW - the blu ray does it all for you! (not sure about this one, to add it will not increase the price all that much!)

PSU: Unless you plan to add extra Graphics Card, you do not need the 850W. Going for the Corsair TX650 will save you money and reduce the amount of power your PC uses.

CPU Cooler: As you will not be overclocking the CPU, you will not require the ECO 240. The standard ECO will be more than adequate for cooling the as it runs very cool. We tested an i7-970 @ 4.0GHz on a Titan Fenrir at 100% load and it peaked at 75 degrees!!

Let me know if there is anything else I can help with.
 
E

enhorning

Member
Thanks. These are all interesting ideas, worth considering. I will think it over, as well as discuss the matter with my wife.
 
Sleinous

Sleinous

Author Level
I was about to say, 64bit only makes use of 2 cores anyway but then i read your cpu calculations. Only things a six core would be useful for is exactly that, such as folding@home which, runs much better on gpu's anyway. Id agree with the case, haf-x may be a little overkill, pity you dont have my student discount for windows ;) bought win7 ultimate x64 for £55 xD

Edit: 6gb of the kingston like i have, should be a good way of cutting cost! Besides 2gb modules can only continue to fall in price unless precious metal prices sky rocket ;) I can confirm 6Gb is fine for 24/7 folding@home CPU calcs so id have thought the same of whatever you're planning to do with it.
 
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