Future build: Victor

[Luinbariel]

Sweet Hazues HeK, if your member group wasn't already perfectly appropriate, I'd suggest having it changed to Technological Savior/Savant or something in the vein. +1 for building better rigs through rational suggestions.

HeK eats technology for breakfast.

[Kor]

HeK eats technology for breakfast.

[Eightball]

So, the display that I'm currently using is out of production. It'll be kind of annoying trying to find another monitor of comparable size, height, and image quality, so I might just stick with my assymmetric setup. It'll probably mesh better with a lot of the desks I'm looking at (like this, just sans the right-hand shelves. Certainly it'll save me money not having to bother with other displays. I'd just have to get a simple one for the gf when I pass my current rig off.

Speaking of desks, I've thought of some principles which I'll be updating the OP with. Namely:

• Good use of vertical space. Too often I see a battlestation that is sleek and sexy, but is just stuff splayed on flat on a desk with an empty wall above. A desk with a hutch would be great.
  
• Compartmentalization. Like above, I don't want a plain flat surface to pour all my junk onto. Integrated storage, somewhere to put a printer, all good.
  
• Backlighting. Optimal viewing conditions involve some soft lighting behind a display, like so. I figure some red LED ropes behind my displays will do the trick.
  

As for the desk itself, I want to have separate spaces for work and play. It's pretty dumb having to move my keyboard aside so I have room for my textbooks & notebooks, and I really don't want the distractions that my gaming PC has to offer when I'm trying to work. This may mean separate desks. However, a U-workstation or L-workstation would offer designated spaces for either, while saving me some space. Might be hard to justify the cost though. (on the other hand, only one chair needed vs two for separate desks)

[Didzo]

Staples offers a few L-shaped desks for less than $200, but those offer no vertical storage space. You could probably find wall shelves at Ikea to add in that element if you want to keep the workstation price from getting super high. Compartmentalization and vertical space get pricy when you want a lot of horizontal storage space as well. The workstation depends a lot on how easy you want the thing to be transported and how much money you have to work with, along with your personal aesthetic preferences (stating the blatantly obvious here). The Expedit series from Ikea is worth a mention, but you won't be able to have two work spaces in one location.

Ikea sells LED strips that can change color if you want to get fancy with your backlighting, but what I do is turn my desk lamp to face the wall. I think it looks nice and moving the head around is all it takes to alter the light intensity and spread.

I say that an asymmetric dual monitor system is the best compromise between desk space and computer desktop space.

[Eightball]

I'm pretty sure I'll be picking up some LED rope lighting for this workstation. I've actually had an L-desk from Staples back home & during high school, it was pretty poorly made. Thin particleboard, which began to sag, a lot. Sure, my current desk (IKEA) is also particleboard, but it's pretty thick & sturdy.

Seriously though, the search for a good desk is really difficult. I'm virtually certain that I won't be able to get everything I want without getting handy with some modding myself. I'm pretty sure that what I'm looking for would fall into one of two categories:

1. A U-workstation or L-workstation which would give me dual workspaces.
2. A corner desk with a hutch for my gaming. I'd have my work desk elsewhere; might just recycle my current desk. Problem is, it's pretty rare that I find a hutch tall enough to accommodate my monitors, and finding one as part of a corner desk is even harder.

I updated the OP with some more details regarding display and budget. I'll be dumping good finds as far as desks go as well.

[Vlambo]

May I suggest looking up the free desk area of your classifieds? I got mine from there, and by god, it does its job real well.

[at0m]

My new case, although its got side vents on both sides so ixnay on the PAP thing unless you block them or make them all intakes. http://www.brbuninstalling.com/forum/ind...#msg256466

[Eightball]

Recently subbed to MaximumPC; funnily enough they did a "best bang for your buck" PC build. It looked something like:

i5-3570k
GTX 660
OCZ Vertex 4 or Crucial M4
Gigabyte Z77Z-UP4 (the one with thunderbolt)
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo

Hehe. The only major differences were that they went with a Seagate Barracuda storage drive and a slightly weaker PSU (HX600 vs my HX750), also just 8GB of RAM. That first point intrigued me, but everytime I hear of a BRBU member frying a hard drive, it's always been Seagate. Can anyone vouch for them? Because it would definitely be cheaper than that WD Caviar Black...

[HeK]

Seagates are pretty inexpensive, however they have knocked their warranty back to only two years.
I used to be a big Seagate fan, but with the reduction of their warranty period tells me that they are no longer confident in their quality control.

Personally, I'd go Seagate over Western Digital Blue. If you are going for the WD Black range, there isn't really a competing model.
If you are looking at the WD Raptor, just buy a SSD.

I have about 15 active Seagate drives in my possession (basic barracudas) and only had four failures in the past six years, however two were in the last six months, one of which was on a 10 month old drive.

Edit: Looks like the new 14th generation Barracudas are stupid fast, nearly as fast as the WD Raptors.

[at0m]

Random Seagate comment: the Momentus XTs are nice in laptops if you can't afford an SSD but I don't think they have a desktop equivalent.

[Versus]

haven't had a seagate fail on me yet

[Eightball]

After checking around for a while, and contemplating for about an hour, I picked up one of the OCZ Vertex 4 128GB SSDs for $75 on Newegg today, which was around half off thanks to an early Black Friday sale. I had already settled on the drive beforehand, so seeing it at a cost of $.59/GB, I really can't turn it down. I do not believe I'll see SSDs for that low cost per gigabyte in the 100-200GB range by the time I build. Hopefully I won't regret this decision. Only downside is that these Vertex drives don't ship with the most up-to-date firmware. Oh well, that shouldn't be hard to fix.

Will be updating this thread tomorrow with my plan for Black Friday shopping at Fry's.

[Didzo]

After checking around for a while, and contemplating for about an hour, I picked up one of the OCZ Vertex 4 128GB SSDs for $75 on Newegg today, which was around half off thanks to an early Black Friday sale. I had already settled on the drive beforehand, so seeing it at a cost of $.59/GB, I really can't turn it down. I do not believe I'll see SSDs for that low cost per gigabyte in the 100-200GB range by the time I build. Hopefully I won't regret this decision. Only downside is that these Vertex drives don't ship with the most up-to-date firmware. Oh well, that shouldn't be hard to fix.

Will be updating this thread tomorrow with my plan for Black Friday shopping at Fry's.

Shit, that does sound like a sweet deal.

Any BRBU tech wizards have any words regarding this deal? I am tempted to go for it.

[HeK]

[quote author=Eightball link=topic=6589.msg257209#msg257209 date=1353550638]
After checking around for a while, and contemplating for about an hour, I picked up one of the OCZ Vertex 4 128GB SSDs for $75 on Newegg today, which was around half off thanks to an early Black Friday sale. I had already settled on the drive beforehand, so seeing it at a cost of $.59/GB, I really can't turn it down. I do not believe I'll see SSDs for that low cost per gigabyte in the 100-200GB range by the time I build. Hopefully I won't regret this decision. Only downside is that these Vertex drives don't ship with the most up-to-date firmware. Oh well, that shouldn't be hard to fix.

Will be updating this thread tomorrow with my plan for Black Friday shopping at Fry's.

Shit, that does sound like a sweet deal.

Any BRBU tech wizards have any words regarding this deal? I am tempted to go for it.
[/quote]

$82 is my cost on that drive. So it's not a bad deal. Personally, I'd go for the 256gb.

[scar11]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gefo...79-17.html

ATI has recently dropped the price on the 7870 in response to the 660. Typically 60-80 dollars cheaper than the 660. At this point its kind of hard to justify a 660 when you can pick up a card with close to the same performance for a whole 70 dollars less. Perhaps by the time you buy a card Nvidia will match the price point though.

[Eightball]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gefo...79-17.html

ATI has recently dropped the price on the 7870 in response to the 660. Typically 60-80 dollars cheaper than the 660. At this point its kind of hard to justify a 660 when you can pick up a card with close to the same performance for a whole 70 dollars less. Perhaps by the time you buy a card Nvidia will match the price point though.

Yup, I'm almost certainly waiting until right before building to buy the internals (CPU, Mobo, GPU, and Memory). I went to buy the CM M2 you linked me, and it's back to $120 again, raped.

[at0m]

If you want to put games on it, don't go any smaller than 240.

That said, I picked up a 128GB Vertex 3 for $50 today at TigerDirect. I'm not even sure what I'll use it for yet.

[Eightball]

I already purchased the SSD, and I'm comfortable with it just being a boot drive. A 7200rpm 64MB cache hard drive will be fine for my games. Fast boot time is what I really want out of having an SSD.

I jumped the gun and bought an OCZ Fatal1ty 750W PSU today for $60 after MIR. I'm aware that I could be shooting myself in the foot by going with a brand other than Antec/CM/Corsair just because of a sale, but OCZ isn't exactly a sketchy russian manufacturer; besides, reviews for it are pretty good. It's semi-modular (which is fine), and is 80 plus bronze certified (also fine). There are other modular PSUs at this price point that will cover my power needs, but most are RAIDMAX or other brands that I'm even less familiar with. Besides, this one matches my aesthetics better. Just not sure about the whole "fatal1ty" brand.

EDIT: Still looking at Cases, Optical drives, and CPU coolers this weekend, since the technology hasn't really changed nor will it really change between now and build time.
EDIT2: Oh, those 128GB Vertex 4 SSDs? They sold out, rip

[Eightball]

So, I'm fairly certain that I am going for the CM Storm Enforcer. I keep re-reviewing, but the only mid-tower cases that look sharper IMO are the Corsair Graphite (too expensive) and the NZXT Phantom 410 (side ventssss). I probably checked out 5-7 review videos now, so I think I know what I'm getting into. It's got everything I want: Good cable management, bottom mounted PSU, dust filters on all intakes, all black interior, RED/BLACK aesthetic, all in a mid-tower that's <$100 (actually $65 right now) and isn't chock full of mesh. The consensus that I see most often is that it's a dolled-up HAF 912 for a higher cost. As for me, I think the extra $20 is worth the improved look and door (I'm one of those weirdos that likes doors). So, the question is should I buy now ($65 after MIR) or wait until building? The PCPartPicker price history says that it has been this cheap before, but not any cheaper. Think it'll drop in price at all before April? Do I buy now? Ergh.

So, CPU coolers. If I'm going for something <$30, it's going to be a 212+ or 212 EVO. Both are the same size, and basically the same design. It seems that the EVO has marginally better air movement, and a smoother bottom surface for paste, for $10 more. I guess that's worth it. So, if(cost <= 30){buy(CM212EVO);}. (is that right?)

But I'm still considering higher end coolers. Zalman coolers all seem pretty well reviewed, but I'm not crazy about that copper frill look. The Thermaltake Frio looks really nice, but I'm not going to spend more than $50 here. No, I think I'll stick to Cooler Master. Wouldn't go with the V8 again (impossible to clean), and the Hyper N, and a few others look like trumped up 212s (though the X6 elite does some neat stuff. So, my options are a couple which face out from the motherboard (like the GeminIIs and the Vortex), and I'm not sure how they would play with the general airflow in the case, and the V6 GT. Admittedly, I'm probably paying for the aesthetics for the V6, but ooh. Unless the GeminIIs are really worth checking out, I think it's if(cost >30){buy(CMV6GT);}. Will have to watch for it to drop below $50 though if I actually am going to get it.

[HeK]

The EVO is better then the 212+ because the heat pipes (which transfer heat into the fins) are in direct contact with the CPU heat spreader and the spacing between the contacts is smaller.
The actual dispersion of heat is unaffected as the fin arrangement is the same. The difference in prices does not reflect the difference in performance.

Toh, myself, and others are running overclocks of 800-1000mhz, hitting ~60-62C on Ivybridge CPUs with the Hyper 212s.

If you are looking for a better performing cooler, try the Coolermaster TPC-812 or the Noctua NH-C14.