Custom-built Computer

[Roland]

I'm confused as to what this machine is intended for. At it's specs, it looks designed for either high end photoshop work, or video encoding. And more towards the latter. It also looks like they're on dial up, and the HDDs look kinda slow. I'm shocked at the lack of WD Raptors, or hell, just going to the wall with a SCSI drive, which makes me feel this isn't for encoding.

So what's it for?

Goal #1: To have a shelf-life expectancy BEYOND 2006 / 2007.
Goal #2: High-end digital photography, with potential for video.
Goal #3: Intensive use, day-in and day-out, for all sorts of work-at-home business (and schooling) needs.

I went with the Hitachi's because they were some of the fastest all-around 7200RPM drives, and because the 10k drives were too pricey for too little gain (in terms of storage) at this juncture in time / technology. Besides, I was going off a Dell setup they were looking at, so I didn't exactly flex my brain on other options. They were very specific in what they wanted in some areas, and couldn't care less about other areas, so I only had so much room to customize.

Ok, if you're going to blow money on a 560W PSU, I gotta ask you -- did you check the rails? Does this thing rate at any where near the power load you're expecting to hit? Or did you just buy something based on wattage? 560W is usually overkill in normal systems. A normal system - and granted, this is no normal system - can do fine on 350W.

Did you check the rails? Estimate consumption? Is this one 80% of peak estimated load?

I myself have a Thermaltake PSU that I bought after my old one blew up (literally). I checked the stats, and looked for one with active PFC - Thermaltake was, at the time, one of the only ones that had it. Also, these people are going to be hooking up a LOT of stuff, both internal and out. 350W would have blown instantly; 350W is what I had, and I'm running a box over 2 years old, with only average HW consumption - it literally blew up from overloading. And yes, it gets over 80% peak estimated load, IIRC. Some were higher (85%), but others were far lower (68%), so I went with what I trusted, and what I knew would give them the room to expand. 4GBs of RAM, 3 HDs, a massive processor (the new LGA775 P4's require a minimum of ~300 or 400W; 400W is the "recommended" minimum in the computing community, and as I said, these people are going to be hooking up a lot of peripherals), full-out HW, a big vid card, and loads of eternal peripherals (mouse, keyboard, USB pen drives, digital cameras, etc. are just some of the items) are a lot of drain on a PSU, so I wanted it to be safe for them to use without blowing it up.

Why aren't you buying an Athlon 64? I'd expect if you're going to drop five grand on a machine, you'd at least look at the benchmarks. Are they doing video encoding? I think that's the only thing that an Athlon loses to a pentium too. And it doesn't need DDR2 ram.

Speaking of which ...

Absolutely NO AMD chips. That was another specification. *shrugs* To each their own. I'm an Intel fanboy, myself, but even here I would have been leaning towards AMD. They said no AMD, so I said "Ok."

What justifies this level of investment when it comes to RAM? I honestly can't think of anything that is going to hurt at two gigs, at this level I'm completely confused. That's an extra $600 on RAM that doesn't even add a performance boost. (DDR2, I mean - the extra 2 gigs is, well, the extra 2 gigs?)

Funny you should mention that. I had orignally only put in 2 Gigs, as that was what they had specified. Then they decided, last night, to up it to 4 Gigs. Why is beyond me - I didn't bother asking. They wanted as much memory as humanly possible. I thought about telling them to wait, so that they could upgrade to 667 when Intel finally supports (what the hell are they dragging their hells for THIS time? Idiots.), but decided it wasn't worth arguing. They had their demands, and I was just the guy to bring them to life - little more.

This actually really confuses me. What speaker setup are you using? It seems like this is a little low end for a top of the line system. I mean, maybe I'm crazy, but wouldn't cutting out a gig of RAM and going for the top of the line sound card be a bit better? I mean neither are going to mean anything performancewise, but at least you could have that neat-o front bay thingie.

Originally, they didn't care about sound - hence no speakers in the setup (they have some old cruddy ones they use). But then, again, last night things changed a little. They decided to get a decent sound card, nothing too fancy (i.e. expensive), but nothing bottom-end, either. They ALSO decided to get a 56K modem - her mother asked why she would need one, I gave her the lowdown, and she decided it would be good to have (if I could get one for under $20 - so I did). Keep in mind, they do a LOT of work at home, including vigorous use of remote desktop and VPN tunneling. I think they chose to get the modem because "Why not?", and for use with faxes, etc.

They ... Need ... a ... modem ...

See above. It was a last-minute cheap addition.

Amen. Does it have gigabit lan on chip alongside a hardware firewall? I don't pay attention to Intel's chipsets, them being over priced et al.

IIRC, the Gigabyte board I had selected DID have GB LAN, in addition to 6 (yes, 6!!!) DIMM slots, and RAID 0/1/0+1 on TWO 4x SATA connections. It's a NICE board, and will certainly allow them all the expandability and shelf life they wanted.

What's the warranties on these? I mean, uh ... Seriously is this thing for video encoding? 750 gigs seems so ... High ... Like are they really on dial up? Anyway I would have gone for three Seagate drives at 200 each, but well, actually I'm going for a WD Raptor coupled with Seagate. Only 237 gigs, but admittely, a lot faster.

Well, unless you're making a RAID 5 array? Or something?

Close - RAID 1, or possibly RAID 0+1 (I'm leaning towards RAID 1; I see no reason to add striping to the mix). And the warranties are 3 years. I figure by the time they die, there'll be something bigger and better out - I personally have only ever had one HD die on me, and I use my computers 24/7. The design will be 2x 250 drives set up for a RAID 1 array, with the 3rd drive being used for backup of system images, and all-around data storage (the whole family are photo-freaks, so there's going to be LOTS of digital pictures to store, and probably digital video eventually).

The NEC was $9 wasn't it? Oh well, maybe it was on sale before.

It was and is $9. But it was white. Case is black. I'm anal, and it was a $3 difference ($30 would have been a different story). Besides, I trust Mitsumi drives. I trust NEC monitors. Not sure about the rest of their stuff. ;)

I don't really get the double optical drive thing, that's cool with me, but I don't really get it. Other thing is the NEC 3500 A - which, I've been told is a better model than the plextor - is $85. But I don't think that's SATA.

It's what they specifically asked for - one drive for reading, one for burning. Totally seperate. And the board has NO IDE attatchments whatsoever, so I had to go with SATA. The Plextor has rated high, so I chose that.

No cordless? The MX's are supposedly awesome. As for the trackball ... I ... Trackball?

MY original choice was the cordless MX Duo for $69. They didn't want cordless (I didn't ask why - I found it easier that way). As for the trackball, her mother has severe tendinitis in her right wrist, and using a mouse is literally excruciating after a day (she was already wearing a brace when I saw her last night). She insisted on a trackball, so I got her the one I would have picked (which was the same one she was thinking of). Then I just found a good keyboard to go with it. The split keyboards she finds too cumbersome to use, and actually worsen her condition, due to the nature of WHERE it is in her wrist. Or something.

If it's for video encoding, it's perfect. Except I think they sell 3.6ghz pentiums, and well, a Raptor would have helped a lot. On the other hand, if it's not, it's about two grand more than it should be. Even Doom 3 isn't going to notice the difference between 2 and 4 gigs of RAM. I can't figure out what would.

Next highest Pentium 4 chip @ NewEgg.com: $1070, roughly. And sold out. ;) It will be used for a LOT of digital photography, as well as tons of work-at-home business (i.e. completion of work outside of their usual offices). I know it's overkill, and I told them that at the get-go when they said $5k was their spending limit. But, hey, who am I to argue with the customer? They told me what they wanted, generally (and sometimes specifically), and I filled in the rest.

When a customer has VERY specific desires, it's best not to try and change them - no matter how silly they may be. ;)