Finally Chosen Everything, Will It All Work?

**Carbon** · #11 1st Jul 2009, 12:24

The i7 is not going to have any performance increases over a Q9450 for what you are doing, nor will a Q9450 have a performance increase over a E8400.

For the HDD, try one WD 640GB Black then one of those Greens, another 640GB Black, etc etc.

**The Chad** · #12 2nd Jul 2009, 02:23

Would this harddrive be ok?
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" - OEM
Seagate is a good brand? The one I have no is a Seagate.

Processor now, the E8400. It's still a quad-core and its 2.66Ghz. The one on newegg comes with a heatsink and fan, I don't need that so I'll probably buy from somewhere else. The E8400 doesn't have hyper-threading through? Isn't that important? The computer is going to be used to the max, power is what I need. Would the E8400 handle everything?

**Carbon** · #13 2nd Jul 2009, 12:06

The E8400 will handle anything, yes. But it's a dual-core 3.0ghz, so I think you have the wrong one on NewEgg :p Hyperthreading isn't useful, it only shows gains in synthetic applications.

The 1.5TB drives should be avoided. Those Barracudas are slow and have firmware problems. If you are limited to a certain selection, go ahead and name all the drives you can import/get.

**The Chad** · #14 3rd Jul 2009, 01:40

Well my box has space for like 5-6 harddrives. So if I should avoid the 1.5Tb drives. Could I get, for example, 3 500Gb drives? I really need the space here.

Here's a list of avaiblibe harddrives that I can get ahold of:

Western Digital Caviar Green 500 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 16 MB Cache, 5400 RPM SATA II
Western Digital WD3200KSRTL Caviar 320 GB SATA 3.5-Inch Hard Drive
Western Digital Caviar Blue 250 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 8 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1 TB SATA 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Hard Drive
Western Digital Caviar Green 750 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 16 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II
Western Digital Caviar Green 2 TB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II

**Carbon** · #15 3rd Jul 2009, 12:32

Then your best choices are the 320GB WD or the 1TB Barracudas. Multiple 320GB will be the fastest by far, if that's not much more expensive.

**Ozzie82** · #16 4th Jul 2009, 05:29

Intel Duel Core E5400 @ 2.7GHz will be O.Cing it to 3GHz
Asus P5B Premium $52
WD Caviar Blue 500GB 16mb Cache £43
ATI HD4770 512mb £79
OCZ 500W PSU £39
OCZ DDR2 4GB 800MHz £45
LG Sata Drive £15

Total £343 then maybe few quid for delivery

This is what am going to build my brother once he forks out the cash

I have chosen what i think is right and i what i would be happy with , this setup can extreme game, but on lowered settings, but will run most things very nicely

total price is still under what you would pay for an I7 950 :) and apart from benchmarks, you wont see a massive difference in games

Anyhows, You could save alot of money and buy other nice items for your PC and still have the power to get things running nicely.

I7 is kinda waste of money , and if your going for any i7 get the 920

**The Chad** · #17 4th Jul 2009, 05:56

I'm still very undecided about the processor, right now its between the 920, 950 or even a E9400. I'm going to have to put alot of thought into that. I'll probably go with a 920 and just OC it to 3.0.

You got good specs there for a gaming rig, but I'm playing on maxing all the games I play, so I'm going for the best I can get. But I'm sure that rig you got there will manage very well.

Carbon, I'll go with the 1Tb Barracuda harddrive and just put my music/movies/photos on that. I'll use the 320Gb for OS and files often used. Thank you guys for all the help, think I'm ready to go and buy now :)

**4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie** · #18 4th Jul 2009, 06:41

Carbon is right about the Quad for gaming issue, however you mention a 750GB drive for work related stuff, so I presume you do a lot of that as well.

What applications do you use, because a Quad may be beneficial in some or all of those.

Also I can vouch for the 1TB Barracuda, I have one no problems with it at all. It's reasonably fast wake up from being turned off as well (Just the HDD I mean turned off, not whole PC)

However yes you can use multiple drives, which is a better option really, you can even arrange them in an array which is handy. Although if you did this you'd probably be better off buying an already together array package, Netgear make some wireless ones, with WD Drives I think.

**The Chad** · #19 6th Jul 2009, 10:16

I don't mean serious work, but lots of windows open at a time. Might come as a shock, (shocked me even), but one time I was working with 13 Word documents open

And the computer I was on wasn't coping very well. Think it got a huge relief when I stopped. Thats why I want quad core, for handling large masses of processes.

You know what is really unfair, everything is costing x2 because I have to import it. In my country this is all about R30 000, which in dollars would be about $3529.50. So it's way-overpriced to buy it here. But anyway, its the cheapest by far.

Thank you guys for all your help. Can't wait to order it now and build! Think I'm going to have lots of fun with this machine

**4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie** · #20 6th Jul 2009, 10:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Chad

You know what is really unfair, everything is costing x2 because I have to import it. In my country this is all about R30 000, which in dollars would be about $3529.50. So it's way-overpriced to buy it here. But anyway, its the cheapest by far.

That'd annoy me so bad.

But to save you some money, why not get a Quad core, but not an i7, as they've only just been released and are much more expensive.

Also, AMD tend to be cheaper than Intel, and AMD quad cores are native quad, if that's why you wanted an i7.