My build for the ultimate performance PC

[the_tyrant]

Hey guys, well, lately I have been working on building a new computer for a friend. I think that my build might be of interest to the subsim crowd. I ordered the parts a week or so back, and I don***8217;t have the invoice in my inbox, so I might not have the exact components unfortunately.

So first of all, my friend is a big gamer, plays lots of pc games. However, gaming only comprises 10-20% of the usage of this computer. He has a small UMPC for a laptop, and would rather not use it when at home. Thus the other 80% of the time, he would be doing work processing, spreadsheets, and internet browsing. Virtualization performance is also a must, he is a hobbyist programmer, and he usually runs a few virtual machines on the computer to do testing. The hypervisor we are working with will soon be Hyper-V, and we would like high virtual machine performance.

So first up, is the CPU. We chose the Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 CPU. Great performance, great price, low thermal requirements, and amazing for virtualization; This CPU gets a MAJOR recommendation from me. Ditch your I7s, Xeon e3s are much better. Note: we used the v2 version of this CPU, do not get the v1, it is sandy bridge, v2 is ivy bridge.
Link: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117286

The motherboard choice for a Xeon is much more difficult. We got the ASRock Z77 Pro4-M. It is a z77 board with good, reliable build quality. It works great with our CPU choice, and is a good board for the price. This generation, for LGA 1155, I often end up recommending the z77 chipset. It is simply the most commonly available one at lower prices. Even if you don***8217;t need the graphics, you might want to go with one.
Link: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157306

For ram, we decided to go all out (hey, it***8217;s not that expansive). We got the Patriot Viper 3 32GB kit. 4 sticks of good quality, 8 gb ram.
Link: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220727
On the storage side, we used a mix of SSD and traditional HDD. We got 2 OCZ Vertex 3 120gb Sata III SSDs. They are in raid 0 configuration, for maximum speed. The goal is to put the OS and core applications on the SSD for maximum speed.
Link: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227706
With the SSDs, we also got a 3TB drive to store ALL our files. We went with a Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001. It***8217;s a no frills, simply, large drive for all our storage needs.
Link: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148844
Finally, for the video card, we went with the nVidia GTX 680. We got the ASUS GTX680-DC2T-2GD5, a cheap, simply, high performance system.
Link: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121634

So in all, we built ourselves the ultimate PC. In all, it costs almost 2000 to get everything up (without the screen).

[Herr-Berbunch]

You haven't mentioned the OS? Which is unlike you Are you still routing for 8?

[the_tyrant]

Originally Posted by Herr-Berbunch

You haven't mentioned the OS? Which is unlike you Are you still routing for 8?

Of course

We are using the windows 8 RTM right now, and we will get Windows 8 when it officially comes out (only 69$)

Mind you, this configuration boots FAST. it boots in like 2 seconds, literally

[Tchocky]

Nice build. What case have you got it in?

I would have changed a couple of things myself, but at this level of hardware I think personal preference really outweighs actual performance/efficiency differences
Probably wouldn't have bothered to RAID the SSDs, I'm not sure the speed difference is noticeable. Probably would have gone for a i7 for VM (or even one of those nice AMD 8-cores), and a 7970 instead of the 680 (but that's just me, my first proper GPU was ATI and I'm not really letting go of the bias ).

[the_tyrant]

Originally Posted by Tchocky

Nice build. What case have you got it in?

I would have changed a couple of things myself, but at this level of hardware I think personal preference really outweighs actual performance/efficiency differences
Probably wouldn't have bothered to RAID the SSDs, I'm not sure the speed difference is noticeable. Probably would have gone for a i7 for VM (or even one of those nice AMD 8-cores), and a 7970 instead of the 680 (but that's just me, my first proper GPU was ATI and I'm not really letting go of the bias ).

We used Thermaltake case, nothing fancy, just gets the job done.

With the RAID ssd, windows literally boots in 5 seconds. The boot speed is almost instant. Sure, we went overboard, but goddamn it, its fast.


As for the xeon + 680, we chose the xeon since it can run silent, with the fan off. For a bedroom PC (that often is kept on at night for downloads and what not), this is a must. The Xeon produces almost no heat (so we can turn off the fan), and the graphics card can be turned off completely with a few hacks.

As for AMD/Ati, I liked their parts but their performance per watt is dreadful. Sure, the AMD FX is slightly cheaper, but the amount you lose on your power bill (for a pc that is on 24/7), you lose the savings quite quickly.

Windows 8, oh boy, I just put a very old pc together with windows 98se, got an old cakewalk app running again, pretty good. High end performance computers cost biggusbuckus in the uk.

http://www.ebuyer.com/258888-xeon-pr...-bx80623e31240

[Herr-Berbunch]

I think his point is that it's almost equal performance to an i7 processor, with some better heat qualities, and it's cheaper too. Buy you're likely to pay more for the motherboard and ram.

[JU_88]

Originally Posted by Herr-Berbunch

I think his point is that it's almost equal performance to an i7 processor, with some better heat qualities, and it's cheaper too. Buy you're likely to pay more for the motherboard and ram.

I think the Tyrant is suggesting you 'cheat' a little, by plonking a 1155 Xeon into a Xeon uncertified 1155 board - designed for i series chips.
If it works (and proves to be solid long term) then he may well be on to a winner, but I personally wouldnt want to chance it until it becomes a well established 'tried and tested' practice. Until it does, Im not going to be a test subject

[the_tyrant]

Originally Posted by JU_88

I think the Tyrant is suggesting you 'cheat' a little, by plonking a 1155 Xeon into a Xeon uncertified 1155 board - designed for i series chips.
If it works (and proves to be solid long term) then he may well be on to a winner, but I personally wouldnt want to chance it until it becomes a well established 'tried and tested' practice. Until it does, Im not going to be a test subject

I'm not cheating man, the motherboard officially supports Xeon: http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z77%20Pro4/?cat=CPU

what many people fail to realize, is that workstations (especially on the "lower end" under 5000$ category) usually just use standard desktop parts.

[JU_88]

I stand corrected Tyrant. checked it out and ate my words just before you posted.
The Board of choice is low cost, supports the Xeon and Non-ECC DDR3. Sounds good. But having trawled though many tech sites this evening, it seems that two cpus of equivilant price - are of similarish performance too. I cant see anything that really proves that Xeons will 'crush' their i5/i7 price alternatives -apart from Passmark, but their benchmark is no where near as extensive or as fair of say tomshardwareguide.com.

Passmark get their test results from one source, their own software, and they dont test it themselves either, instead they collect results from their users. Alot of variables there, their approach seems to be quantity over quality IMO.
So i'll take their charts with a pinch of salt.