Building a new PC

[giyad]

Hey everyone,

I am in the process of building a new computer for the first time and I have a couple of questions. First, these are the specifications of the computer:

-Case: Antec Quiet P180 Black /550Watt Power Supply (Seasonic)
-Motherboard: eVGA nForce 680i SLI
-Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.40 GHz, FSB1066, 4 MB L2)
-RAM: OCZ 2GB DDR2-800 (2 x 1GB)
-Hard Drive: Raptor SATA 10,000RPM 150GB
-Video Card: EVGA GeForce 7950GT 512MB
-DVD player (Sony Blu-Ray RW)
-Floppy Drive
-Cooling: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
-OS: Vista

Here are my questions:
1. I was wondering if I should replace one of the fans with the Arctic Cooling fan, or just add the arctic cooling fan to the build? The Antec p180 comes with 3 built in 120mm fans. Also, the E6600 came with a fan, should I just use all the fans that I have now, a total of 5?

2. I was thinking about switching the WD Raptor 10000 RPM with a SCSI 15000 RPM drive, what do you think? Also, I don't know much about SCSI, so will it be compatible with this build?

3. Will I need any extra drive cables, or should all the parts come with the necessary cables?

4. Finally, if anyone has any experience building an Antec P180, do you have any advice for me? Should I start by installing the lower chamber first?

THANKS IN ADVANCE!!

 

[darel001]

Im not to sure abou all of your q's but what i do know according to your specifications, is that at 15,000 RPM , that is a hot hard drive. Im not too sure how well that does with heat, i just reccommedn you leaving good spaces inbetween the HD to give it a good cool.

The fans you have now, should do well (although i dont know much about that stuff.) but with the core 2 duo, that also means less heat as compared to a higher clock rate speed CPU.

Why do u want such fast HD? Gaming?

I didnt know they made 160gb raptors, i tought they only went up to 74gb.
AND 15000 hds exhist? wow. what is the average seek time?

What I know is that Raptors get pretty hot at 10K RPM. So leave good gaps to give it a good cool. Try to organizeyour cables the best possible way. Maybe hide them on the back hatch holding your MOBO. Thats what i did.

Now I dont have all the answers to your Qs. But Im guessing that your fans should do well. Also make sure to clean or check periodically for dust.

Higher RPM means more heat.
But the lower clock speeds of c2D MEANS ;LESS HEAT ALSO.

Just make sure the HD gets good ventilation and isnt obstructed ( in my case My VID CARD is big so it blocks some air, so i had to turn my side fan window arround to turn the fan arround.)

If it gets good ventilation , i think youl get good cooling whith what u have.

Why do u want such high RPM? Gaming? Y dont u give a try to that RAID type that allows for alternating hd WRITING.

 

[giyad]

Yeah man its insane! 15000 RPM, I just found out myself. avg seek time = 3.5s, but they are really expensive. Im definately not getting one hehe. I saw a false advertisement on pricegrabber, so my hopes are up for that, but I'll take your advice for the organization. I read on some other forums that the cooling I have is good, but I'm just not sure if I should install the fourth one, or replace one of the Antec fans?

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

I would suggest getting 2 10,000 RPM drives in RAID instead of one 15,000 RPM drive. And yes, Raptors do get very hot. Why not try a watercooling solution, as opposed to so many fans? I have one and it works out pretty well. Oh, and make sure you have the northbridge cooling covered, coz that particular one gets real hot, real fast.

 

[giyad]

Well... I have been taking a look at water cooling as well but its expensive and they say its unnecessary. I have read some reviews on PC's with very similar builds to the one I spec'd and they say they overclocked and still didn't need any water cooling. Do you have any suggestions on a water cooling system, and do you really think its necessary?

I only wanted one drive because I already have an external 500GB. Actually, I have 2 500GB hard drives, but I use one to back up the other. I am thinking about setting them up in a RAID simply for redundancy but I've never done RAID before. Once you set a drive up in RAID, how easy is it to separate the drives? Like if I wanted to travel and take one of the drives with me for example.

Also, lets just say that I wanted the 15000 RPM SCSI drive, do you know if the 680i SLI supports SCSI? I found a Fujitsu 36.4GB 15,000 RPM - 8MB cache for like 130$ while the Raptor 150GB 10000 RPM - 16MB cache is $199. I think Im just going to stick to the Raptor but I wanted to know if my mobo supports SCSI?

 

[sllewe]

Well no it does not support it with an onboard adapter, not many non-server motherboards do. You would have to get a SCSI add on card that uses the PCI bus. I can not verify first hand but the PCI bus will most likely bottleneck the Drive. I would go with a Raptor as suggested.

 

[giyad]

Thanks! I think I will stick with the Raptor

Still though, I am not sure what I should do about the cooling. Have any of you dealt with the Antec P180 before? It comes with three built-in fans, but I purchased an Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7 to add as well. I didn't know that the processor came with its own fan, so now I have 5 fans. Should I just install all 5 fans (they are all supposed to run quiet), or should I replace one of the cases fans with the Pro 7 and leave the CPU's fan to deal with the CPU (total of 4 fans)? The case can hold up to 4 120mm fans and 1 80mm I think.

Or do you suggest water cooling? I don't know much about it, all I know is its expensive, hard to install, and can damage the parts if for some reason the thing breaks. I don't want to spend anymore but, if you really think this build might need it, I will have to think about it.

 

[sllewe]

Well it is really up to you. If you really dont want to spend the money than you can cool with air, fairly effectively. Water is nice, and its really not that hard to set up, and it is pretty quiet. But again air cooling is easy, and very cheap.

If you are worried about your HDD getting to warm, I have used something like this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817121909
combined with a fan blowing on it, MY HDD was in the 20's. very effective. My HDD was not a raptor but it should still help.

 

[giyad]

How do you measure the temperature that the components are running at? Do they have a built in thermometer or something?

 

[sllewe]

Yes most Hard Drives nowadays come with internal thermal monitors.

 

[giyad]

How do I run these monitors?

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

You can use Everest Home Edition to check the HDD temps.

 

[giyad]

Got it thanks

 

[Starfox00000]

Really, HD speed dosent affect much at all unless your doing a big transfer of files. Games preload everything into ram, if your playing oblivion you wont notice squat between a 7200 rpm HD or a 10k rpm HD, drop down to a lower rpm and use the extra cash for some more hd space. For building, put the HD's and CD's in first then the psu then the mobo and finallly the rest of everything. and dont plug in any cable until everything is in - they get in the way. All the cables and stuff should come with the parts so dont worry, be happy

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

Yes but it's better getting a faster HDD than getting more RAM innit? After all, how much RAM can you fit into a mobo. The average mobo only supports a max of 4-8GB, and buying that much RAM is very expensive. So getting a fast HDD would be a lot better, especially for games that have compressed textures like Oblivion. And yes, there is a difference in gameplay when playing Oblivion with a Raptor and without one. The annoying, slight pause when it loads new areas/terrain is now completely gone since I bought my own set of Raptors.

 

[giyad]

For building, put the HD's and CD's in first then the psu then the mobo and finallly the rest of everything. and dont plug in any cable until everything is in - they get in the way. All the cables and stuff should come with the parts so dont worry, be happy

Thanks! The problem is that everything arrived except the PSU and my HDD So I am so anxious to start building hehe but I can't really.

For the HDD, I think rotational speed plays a big part in performance. It can find the desired sector much faster. Also, the Raptor X has a 16mb cache/buffer size ! You can get it on Bestbuy for $199, and at the time when I backordered it last week it was going for $169. So price was pretty damn good. Thanks for all your help guys I'll let you know how the PC turns out once I actually build it.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

Cache size doesn't affect drive performance that much, AFAIK.