WoW rig

[Pyx]

Mix of suppliers, more luxurious case:
- case & PSU: Antec Sonata III 550W @ EUR 119
- Motherboard: MSI P45 NEO-F @ EUR 59
- CPU: Intel E8400 at 3Ghz @ EUR 143
- GPU: Nvidia GTS250 @ EUR 114
- HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB @ EUR 50
- Ram: Kingston 4GB kit @ EUR 44
- Screens: Samsung 2343BW 23" at 2048x1152 @ EUR 199
- Keyboard: Logitech G11 @ EUR 59
- OS: Windows Vista Basic 64-bit @ EUR 89
- LAN: PCI WLAN adapter @ EUR 28
- Misc: DVD/RW @ EUR 20
-> EUR 925 (intel/nVidia)

Next gen i7 system:
- case: Antec Solo @ EUR 90
- PSU: Coolermaster M520 @ EUR 69
- Motherboard: Asus P6T SE @ EUR 187
- CPU: Intel i7 920 at 2.6Ghz @ EUR 239 (expected to fall in April)
- GPU: Nvidia GTX260-216 @ EUR 169
- HDD1: Intel X25-M SSD 80GB @ EUR 279
- HDD2: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB @ EUR 55
- Ram: Kingston 6GB DDR3 kit at 1333 mhz @ EUR 79
- Screens: Samsung 2343BW 23" at 2048x1152 @ EUR 199
- Keyboard: Logitech G11 @ EUR 59
- OS: Windows Vista Basic 64-bit @ EUR 89
- LAN: PCI WLAN adapter @ EUR 28
- Misc: DVD/RW @ EUR 20
-> EUR 1562

Best of both worlds:
- case: Antec Solo @ EUR 90 (Alt @ EUR 89)
- PSU: Coolermaster M520 @ EUR 76 (Alt @ EUR 69)
- Motherboard: MSI P45 NEO-F @ EUR 59 (Alt @ EUR 82)
- CPU: Intel E8400 at 3Ghz @ EUR 139 (Alt @ EUR 159)
- GPU: GTS 250 1GB @ EUR 129 (alt @ EUR 119
- HDD1: Intel X25-M SSD 80GB @ EUR 199 (Alt @ EUR 229)
- HDD2: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB @ EUR 49 (alt @ EUR 49)
- Ram: Corsair 4GB kit at 800/1066 mhz @ EUR 46 (Alt @ EUR 49)
- Screens: Samsung 2343BW 23" at 2048x1152 @ EUR 209 (alt @ EUR 199)
- Keyboard: Logitech G11 @ EUR 69 (Alt @ EUR 59)
- OS: Windows Vista Basic 32-bit @ EUR 89 (Alt @ EUR 89)
- LAN: PCI WLAN adapter @ EUR 22 (Alt @ EUR 29)
- Misc: DVD/RW @ EUR 23 (Alt @ EUR 23)
-> EUR 1199 (Alt @ EUR 1244)

[Pyx]

Solid State Drives are getting very interesting now, with Intel's new second generation driving down prices while improving performance.

[Elhaz]

So, i've been thinking to build myself a new computer for WoW and general gaming (and maybe some Photoshopping). 700 € would be the limit i could pay at the moment. So here are the parts(sorry that most of the info is in finnish, but cba to find all that info in english):

Motherboard: Asus P5Q Pro Has that new intel P45 technology stuff and CrossFireX 114,60 €
CPU: Intel Core2Duo E8400 3,0 GHz 162,55 €
GPU: Club 3D HD4890 Super OC 211,85 €
Ram: Kingston 4GB 800MHZ DDR2 Can be changed for better 55,20
HDD: SMG F1 1TB 3.5" SATA2 7200RPM 32MB Again accepting better suggestions unless it doesen't cost strawberries... 73,45 €

Total: 617,65 €

I am left wondering here, that will my 480W PSU be enough? And i left screens, cases and DVD drives off of this because i already have those.

[Pyx]

Expensive motherboard, here you could probably save € 30 to € 50. Instead of buying a € 200+ graphics card I would buy one for about € 100 less (WoW doesn't really need a beast, nor does Photoshop), also Nvidia does seem to cause less problems in WoW then Ati graphics (f.e. the Nvidia GTS250).

With the money saved and the little spare you have left in your budget I would most certainly add a SSD (and more specifically the Intel X-25M) as primary HDD. That alone will lead to a massive performance increase (and you then have the regular HDD for storage).

[Elhaz]

Well, i will also play other games with it so i think i'll stick with that GPU(it seems to have best price/quality on market). And yes, you are right about motherboard, expensive... But it seems that you can't get one with CrossFire under 100 €.

I'll certainly consider that SSD. Those seem to be awfully expensive though...

[Zarhan]

Be aware that Intel X-25 suffers from slowdown problem (although a firmware update partially fixed it).

[Pyx]

All SSD's suffer from that (i.e. over time, performance will decrease). However, even in their lowest performance point it's still light-years beyond the fastest regular HDD's where it matters (basically, your operating system works very fluidly and load-screens are instantly dispatched with). Do note: only take the Intel X25-M, or a couple of very specific OCZ's, as there is also a lot of trash on the SSD market.

[Jaera]

my new pc is a rampage II i7 4.2ghz 6gb ram and about to be watercooled

[Pyx]

And how does that relate to building a WoW-rig for € 700? Oh wait, you just wanted to show your e-peen

[Elhaz]

What specific OCZ's you mean? That shop where I'm going to buy my parts didn't have that Intel one, but had some of those OCZ's.

Been thinking of this: OCZ SSD 120GB SATAII 2,5" SOLID SER 267,95 €
Link to manufacturer's site

Or do you think I could do with less space? 80 and 60 Gb ones aren't that much cheaper though...

[Pyx]

Not the OCZ Solid range, you'd be best off with the OCZ Vertex range. All this is due to the components used in the various lines, with the Vertex line using the fastest controller. SSD's with older controllers could actually deliver dreadful performance. This is bleeding edge technology, so consider yourself warned

However, Intel remains king in performance and after slashing their prices in value as well (perhaps you can find the Intel's which Kingston rebranded?).

As it should only be used for storing your OS and critical applications (f.e. WoW ) 60 GB should just be sufficient, unless you want to taste negligible loading times with all games.

[Elhaz]

Oh well, I guess I'll buy one of those OCZ Vertex 60GB ones... Too bad those 120gb vertexes are over 300 €

Although I could get one of those 80gb Intel ones for 200 € from other shop...

Edit: Disregard all that above. Not going to buy one of those yet. I will buy one of those when they will be lot more cheaper. I don't think paying 200€ to spend 2-5 seconds less in loading screen is really worth it right now. Let's see again in 6 months.

[Elhaz]

Holy double post, Batman! Well, damn it! I ordered that OCZ Vertex 60GB anyways...

So, my computer will have all that what I posted above and that SSD... Now, let us wait...

[Jaera]

who cares how fast things load. its all about how many hundreds of fps you can get!

oh and my watercooling stuff got held up in birmingham so i have no pc. will try to get patched up on the laptop

[Zarhan]

Well, I'm running 4x750GB HDDs as a RAID5 - things load pretty fast since you get combined bandwidth of four HDDs

[Pyx]

And even such a raid array is blasted away by a single SSD

[Jaera]

raid 5 uses one hdd for parity data?

raid 0 is perf king but risky


and shush pin you may load 3 secs faster but you are playing the game way way longer than watching loading screens. and we will have way more space and budget to spend on fun things like watercooling

[Pyx]

As if a faster loading screen was the only benefit of a SSD

And you and your overclocked system. Apparently you now even need water cooling to stave of some of it's unreliability

[Jaera]

whats the other benefit? less capacity? 6 times the price?

oh and dont say reliability as my regular drives have never had a single problem

and my pc is plenty reliable... only times ihavent made it is because i dont have the cooling stuff yet. orbecause im putting a new os on it. its been stress tested for hours at the overclocked speed.

now stop talking about expensive hard drives and buy a damn mic! thats the only addition we would like to your 'wow rig'


edit: and your sig is not working

[Thuren]

oh and dont say reliability as my regular drives have never had a single problem

Good for you. I've lost all my data twice in my life due to hard drive failure (well on the second time, almost everything in My Documents was rescuable to an extent). One of the times actually involved The Smoke coming out of the HD which was then fried and unrecoverable short of being sent to the boys in Norway.

And compared to many other things, hard drives are relatively inexpensive so I can stand to lose some space (how many terabytes do you actually need unless you plan on filling you space with downloaded pr0n and anime?) over the knowledge that unless 2 or more of my drives crash and burn at the same time, I can just replace a disk and keep on rocking.