The New Machine Part 3, Justifications.

Why oh why and why. 

Justifications, don't you just love the word. Reasons, explanations and causes. Why I chose the parts, the reasons behind it. The decision making and planning. The mistakes and oversight and constraints.

The reasons, I needed a new computer, a refreshed and up to date system. The old machine had no more upgrade path in terms of available parts and cost wise. So it was acceptable that a new machine be built. The design and decision making were based on a criteria I have accustomed with. Not fanboyism.

1. Cost
2. Ability/Technology
3. Practicability
4. Scalability i.e. Future proofing, upgrade path

It works out as CAPS, nah just made that up. Sounds nice eh? There's also another criteria or is it. When it comes to selection, there is the issue of availability. You can't buy something when it's not available domestically.

Cost. I went for a balance of price and feature set. Not to cheap, so as not to lose out on reliability and longevity. Not to expensive, so as not to burn a hole in your wallet or burn your wallet altogether. 

Ability/Technology. It needed to be current or new, more inclined to new but revised and stable. For example the motherboard i selected. We'll touch on that later on.

Practicability. Something practical of course, there's just no point getting something your not going to use. It must serve a purpose. It must not be over used or under used.

Scalability. Basically future proofing. Having an upgrade path is vital for the longevity of the machine so as not to be stuck on a dead end technology. Culdesac.

Now that we have gone thru my criteria. Let's take an in depth analysis, by parts.

The Processor

An Intel Core i5-2500K Processor (6M Cache, 3.30GHz Turbo 3.7GHz)

Sandybridge. Only bested by the i7's in it's series but not as expensive compared to them. A quad core because programs are headed to multithreading, the K denoting an unlocked multiplier processor. We will be able to overclock it, to increase performance for future programs. Of course, voiding the warranty when oc'd.

The Motherboard

Asus P8P67 Pro B3 Rev 3.0 Asus site

I chose Asus because of feature wise, warranty and a level of reliability. You can never go wrong with an established brand. The P67 chip set, basically for the unlocked multiplier overclocking ability. All in all the features on this motherboard are brilliant. But, minus the inability  to use the i5 built in display chip. Which was okay since I would be using a dedicated GPU. Or so I thought.
 
In all honesty, I must say I made a mistake perhaps. I had the choice of either P67 or Z68. After a while of retrospect, I think I should've went for the Z68, since they were priced almost similar. Differences being Z68 was newer, had SSD smart response technology and ablility to use the built in display of the Sandybridge processors. At least you can switch to the built in display and giving the GPU some rest. And of course have some fail over ability. Basically it was an impulse decision, unwise.

The Graphics Card

Asus  Radeon EAH6870 Direct CU 1GB DDR5 Asus site

Yup, the brand. Now the chip set, well that's another thing. I've never used an ATI dedicated GPU chip before. I started out with a S3 Virge 3D  :) , then a 3dfx Voodoo 2 and to last card an Nvidia Geforce 2. Pci and AGP interface's. ATI's weren't in the same of tier of the other products that I used during that time, but of course, how time's have changed.

I chose ATI because of features such as temperatures, power consumption, eyefinity, crossfire (scalability) (yes nvidia has sli) and ultimately price. Yes, we all know since the beginning of time the issues with ATI drivers. But there has been improvement.

My first choice was the Radeon HD 5870 but then the HD 6000 series came out. I assumed, yes that's right assumed that the HD 6870 was at the same level of the HD 5870. Oh what a big mistake, wrong buy or was it? Had I known that the HD 6970 was the successor, I would have selected that. A huge oversight. But of course it cost more.

In the end after using it in games such as BFBC2 and COD: Black ops in maximum settings, performance wise I found it to be above acceptable. Lower power consumption, lower temperatures, lower price and performance was not compromised. So I'll live with it, since the HD 7000 series release is near.


Asus has two versions of the HD 6870. This particular version has Direct CU custom cooling and factory overclocked. Priced the same with the reference design. And because of branding, you pay a premium of 30 dollars more compared to a stock Sapphire HD 6870. I have yet to see any temperatures benefits honestly with the Direct CU fitting. Idling at 45c was not what I expected, but that is because of another reason. Reason being casing AIRFLOW. Load temperatures hover around 75c to 82c, which is okayyy.

The RAM

Corsair Vengeance LP 2 x 4GB 1600mhz 1.5v Ram Corsair Site

8GB will give you a lot of headroom, a lot. The price of ram's these days are cheap compared to years before that it just does not make any sense not to get more than 4GB. And with Windows now available in 64bit, you are now able to use more than 4GB. Which is a limitation of 32bit operating systems.  Nowadays you can get a 2GB stick, kingston valuerams for 14dollars. I remember buying 512mb rams for 50dollars in the past!

No point in filling up your ram slots with 4x2GB's. Cause when it's time to upgrade in the future you would have to take out  a pair of the 2GB. Leave some slots empty.

I went for the brand, corsair. The limited lifetime warranty. The low profile heatsinks. The price. I didn't want anymore exploding ram sticks, phobia kicking in.

The Power Supply

Corsair AX850 80 Plus Gold psu (Originally a CM GX650 psu, upgraded :) )  Corsair Site

The processor is the brain. The power supply is the heart. Without the heart pumping the blood, the brain is useless or your just dead. Without a stable heart the body as a whole is weakened.

Same goes for computers. Get a good power supply, an adequate wattage supply, with some headroom. Going cheap on the power supply is the worst thing you can do with a system filled with pricey components. Compromising on quality for price will in the long run bite you back, hard. Previous experiences have thought me, exploding rams, burnt slot, problems with the motherboard's cmos you name it. Phobia of exploding psu's.

Initial reason for selection was the Graphics card, required a 500watt psu minimum. The other's being brand, modular cabling, stability and reliability of components inside the psu. I intially had the Coolermaster GX650watt psu, but after a doublethink. I changed to the AX850 which cost almost three times more. Scalability for crossfire setup and cpu upgrade. Reliability for the system as a whole.

The Casing

Coolermaster CM 310 Elite RC-310 CM Site

Weren't really looking for a fancy smancy gigantic case. That would be the last thing on my mind. Something simple and serves a purpose would do just fine for me. At 45 dollars, the CM 310 Elite was just fine for me. A bit of a snug fit though.

It's when the system is running then you see why you need a adequately sized casing. Airflow. The Asus Radeon EAH 6870 just barely made it in the casing, just a few millimeters gap to the HDD cage.

I decided to put a 120mm front intake fan ( since it only came with a rear exhaust ), and it barely made any difference or any at all. The only device getting good temperatures is the HDD which sits right behind the front intake. Basically the front intake fan has too many things blocking it to have any larger effect. Placing another 80mm lower side exhaust fan resulted in nothing. Basically another ill decision. I would be looking for a new case after this, and am considering a CM 690 II Basic or Advance.

The Disk Drive
 

Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKX 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" 

At first, I thought of getting a 1TB or 2TB drive. But I'm not going to have a lot of data on the drive in the system. All of my data will be on a NAS or a minimum of external drives. The 500GB is just for Operating Systems and installed programs.

I actually am more inclined to using seagates. But no a lot of the shops domestically are selling seagates, so my choices were confined to literally WD drives. My initial choice was a 1TB WD Caviar Black just the same specifications as the Caviar Blue I opted, difference being the Caviar Black had 32MB cache and double the capacity. Sata 6.0Gb's on the drive fitted on the motherboards 6gb port, so that clicked in just nice. For 38 dollars, compared to 80 dollars for the 1TB. It was good enough for me, because eventually down the line I'd be getting an SSD when their price to size ratio is more economically justifiable.

The Optical Drive

Samsung 24x Dvd-rw

Nothing in particular, just went for the cheapest drive I could get or needed. Because all my older dvd-rw's were ide/pata devices, I couldn't use any of them on a sata only connector motherboard. At least the Asus P8P67 LE mb had 1 ide port but eventually I went for the Pro version.

The Operating System
 
Win 7 Professional 64bit

One of the reasons I chose Pro over Home Premium, was the shop had no discs for the Home Premium version. It was 30 dollars cheaper, it was enough. But the Pro came with a discs, hrmm. Other being it had XP-mode ( basically you can download from MS and run win xp on virtual pc in win 7 not requiring an XP license ). Unlike the Win7 versions  below Pro. 64bit any version for fully utilizing the hardware capability and no 4gb ram limit.

And of course, we have Linux :) too....all the merrier now.

The Monitor
 
Samsung 19inch LED S19A300N Samsung Site

More of a, had to buy than needed to buy. At 110 dollars, with only a 1366x768 resolution it was nothing special. Comes with a VGA port and a DVI port. It's only 18.5 inch display. The package only included a VGA cable, what a bummer. Luckily the Asus EAH 6870 came with dvi to vga adapters as well as dvi to hdmi adapters.

Check my other post regarding problems with "No signal detected".