Building a rig, wish it was mine!

So I have a hardcore photoshop customer who wants me to build her a computer. I ordered the parts today, here are the specs...

Intel Core i7 2600
Asus P8P67 Deluxe
12GB Patriot Viper II Sector 7 DDR3 1600MHz
2 1TB WD Caviar Black SATA6 Raid 1
1 3TB WD Caviar Green
1 80GB OCZ Vertex 2
EVGA Geforce GTX 580 1.5GB
Win 7 Ult 64bit
LG Blu-Ray Re-writer
CoolerMaster HAF 922
CoolerMaster RS700 PSU
Logitech G510 Keyboard

Wish I could take it home when its done..

Nice, using photoshop certainly would call for the 12gb of RAM, or atleast make it easier.

Shes HARDCORE photoshop user. She works only in RAW format, and her camera is something like 25MP. Its a crazy camera!

$3k if anyone wants one!

L0rdG1gabyt3 wrote: $3k if anyone wants one!

That's it!!

I'll take 3 please.

J_E_R_O_M_E wrote:

L0rdG1gabyt3 wrote: $3k if anyone wants one!

That's it!!

I'll take 3 please.

Will that be cash or credit?

Spacely Space Bucks of course.

I call JEROME for my secret santa this year

Im trying to get my boss to sponsor me for upcoming LANS and pay for a rig like this for me to take with me.... So far its not going too well.

You have to have skill to be sponsored.

Ive decided to post a kind of build log here for anyone who may be interested.

First, pics of the parts.
The first part needs no introduction.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-21

Yes folks, those are 2 1TB WD Caviar Black SATA 6 drives. The customer wants them in RAID1

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-21

3TB WD Caviar Green. The special controller card is not pictured. But we will see it later.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-21

80GB OCZ Vertex 2. Will be used as the "scratch" drive.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-21

CoolerMaster 700W SilentPro. Already installed in the case with rubber grommets.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-21

LG Blu-Ray Burner

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-21

12GB Patriot Sector 7 RAM

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-21

Intel Core i7 2600 3.4GHz Quad Core

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-21

Logitech G510. The user wants to monitor temps and resource usage with the screen.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-21

All in a CM HAF 922

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-21

The user wanted to put filters on the intake fans. I found an aluminum mesh filter by ModRight for the huge fan on front of the case.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-21

For the bottom fan port, we put a 140mm AeroCool Shark Black. It will be configured to be in silent mode. I have already attached the ModRight filter to it in this pic.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-21

That is all for now.
When the motherboard arrives, I will finish the build, and let you guys know!

Got tracking confirmation finally on the motherboard. Depending on which warehouse its coming from, I may have it tomorrow or Wednesday.

Hopefully tomorrow.

I got the motherboard yesterday and did the majority of the build. I finsihed it up today, and did some benchmarking... Windows Expierence Rating, Heaven 2.5, and 3DMark 11 Basic.

I will upload pics tonight when I get home.

So yesterday the motherboard arrived! I was so excited!

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

Here is the proc.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

In its brand new home!

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

No plans to OC the chip. Its not the 2600K, so we are going with the stock cooler.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

My first time building on at least what I would consider a premium board. I have read about the memory slot clips being flat on one side, but this is the first time I have seen it in person. Whoever thought of this idea is a genius!

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

RAM installed.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

Board mounted in the case.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

Video card in place.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

I went ahead and plugged in power to the mainboard at this point as well. I was eager to POST for the first time.

UEFI BIOS. First time I have actually seen one of these. Its really cool. But for as much as its different, its still very much the same.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

Using the Marvell controller for the RAID1 on the WD Caviar Blacks.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

Before plugging in any other HDDs, its time to install Windows.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

Drivers installed. Check the TaskManager!

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

Now here is the controller card that WD sends along with the 3TB Green drive. It guarantees compatibility with your computer. I guess alot of southbridge chips get kinda wonky with drives over 2TB. To be able to access the drive over 2.19TB you need 3 things. You need a UEFI BIOS, a 64bit OS, and the ability to format the drive as GPT instead of MBR.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

Installed.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

All hardware installed, but its a damn mess!

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

Wiring completed. Good thing this will be hidden behind the hard drives and back panel.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

This is how Windows sees the 3TB drive right off the bat.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

Thats better! Re-initialize as GTP!

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

Ok. Now for the benchmarking portion.

First with the basic Windows Experience Index.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30
Just about what I expected. Its what I told the customer too. The mechanical drives are the weak spot in this build. Still nothing to sneeze at. Its hella-fast!

Ran the Heaven Benchmark v2.5. Here are the results. The resolution used is the highest my 19" panel at work would do.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

I had SpeedFan running in the background during the benchamark. Here is what it said the GPU temp was right after coming out.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

3D Mark 11. I just ran the free version for download.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

Temps just after run.

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

And here is the score!

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

Noticed this little touch on my way out tonight...

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30
Part of the heatsink is lighted. Nice!

So.... thats it! It does make everything else on my bench look pretty pathetic!

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

By l0rdg1gabyt3 at 2011-03-30

I currently have it running a 16hr burn-in stress test. If its on when I get to the shop in the morning, it can go home.

Hope you enjoyed!

Yeah, as impressive as the components are, that work area is awesome.

Each screen is its own work bay. The monitors are setup with both VGA and DVI connections. The keyboard and mouse is shared with a KVM switch.

Believe it or not, Im the only tech covering all those stations!

I was glad to have my own room for my computer at my apartment.. now I feel cheated. Lol nice station man.

Why mess up the memory config with 3 sticks? 1155 is dual channel. Dropping down to single channel is going to kill performance. Get another 4gb and stick it in there. Are you using that add-in card for the hard drive? You don't need it with that motherboard.

One of the pics shows him setting up a Marvel controller. Those are known to me much slower than the ICH controller that is integrated on the board.

Kelf wrote: I was glad to have my own room for my computer at my apartment.. now I feel cheated. Lol nice station man.

Thanks!

Nacelle wrote: Why mess up the memory config with 3 sticks? 1155 is dual channel. Dropping down to single channel is going to kill performance. Get another 4gb and stick it in there. Are you using that add-in card for the hard drive? You don't need it with that motherboard.

Its what the customer asked for. They have not called to complain about performance... I doubt they would even notice a difference! In fact, I'm not sure a good 95%+ of users would notice the difference. I did use the add-in card for the 3TB Cav. Green because I wanted to be ABSOLUTLEY certain that it was going to work. Last thing I need is for my customer to throw a fit because the drive is acting up.

Nacelle wrote: One of the pics shows him setting up a Marvel controller. Those are known to me much slower than the ICH controller that is integrated on the board.

That board actually has 2 integrated controllers. One for the SATA3, and one for the SATA6. The Marvell controller is the SATA6 one. Since his HDDs are SATA6, and he wanted a RAID1 config, it just made sense to me to use the Marvell/SATA6 controller.

Maybe the customer didn't know any better about the memory. But I'm pretty sure the person selling the computer should have know not to allow a config that would bring the memory bandwidth down by half. If they were insistent on 12gb and didn't want 8gb or 16gb, than it should have been 2x4gb and 2x2gb. And just because they won't notice the difference isn't really how we take care of customers is it? That person is spending a lot of money. By the parts list, I would assume that they are expecting to get top notch. Are they really if it's configured wrong? Also, I have the Evo version from Asus and the white sata ports are the Intel Sata 6g, the light-blue are Sata 3g, and the dark-blue are the marvel ports.