Custom Gaming rig - Any good?

Mr GRiM said:

Go for a good quality PSU don't go for low wattage, IMO more is better at least 600W and single Rail and for a Graphics Card I would recommend any of the GTX200 series cards and I would go for EVGA as they have good return policies and a step up program if you want to upgrade within the first 6 months (US residents only).

I understand your concern; however, high power is often very highly overrated. Depends greatly on the graphics card.

I'm running a dozen hard drives (yes, that's 12 of them), an i7-920, 12GB of CAS-7 memory, a power-hungry RAID array controller, two tuner cards and a 1GB HD 4850 graphics card on a 750-watt PCP&C power supply. And, according to the Kill-a-Watt power measuring gadget, I'm drawing about 350 watts at idle and peak at power-on at about 600 watts. I seldom draw more than about 475-500 watts under peak load. Power-on is the most I've ever drawn (it's all those hard drives spinning up).

I believe ATI specifies a 450W PSU for a 4850 system. And that's being conservative. If you have a quality PSU that actually delivers clean power, it can be done on a little more than 350W easily.

And buying high watt PSUs means that will be running on low power cosntantly, which is inefficient. Bigger isn't better. Get a 450W, best brand you can afford.

WTF do you have 12 hdds for? Is this is file server? It seems likes you'd want to put storage on a weak tower and hide it away so you don't have the noise of 12 hdds rattling your main pc.

I have that case... Sure it's full tower and it's cheap. Not too bad of a case but I wish I saved more for a better case. Blue LEDs are very annoying. If you put this thing on your desk you'd want to put tape over the front LEDs; they're way too bright. I removed the front door because it's more annoying than being anything useful.

GPU: I'm almost going to jump on this deal. MSI 1gb 4890 for 136$ MSI 4890 w/ 3 free games= $136 AR/AC/ACB and eBillme - SlickDeals.net Forums
HDD: Newegg has 10% off HDDs Newegg 10% off internal external laptop hard drives ends 6/22 - SlickDeals.net Forums . That Hitachi drive can be had for 67$, unless you live in CA :)

Mr GRiM said:

That's allot of Hard drives, I have 2 in mine and I also run 2 separate PSU's, I have one 600W to power the Main components and another 650W PSU just to run my single Graphics card (which I would like to make SLI soon), so that's a total of 1250W which I know is overkill but at least I know if the main PSU goes it wont take out my Graphics card with it.

Actually, that could endanger your graphics card more than you know. If the PSU running the graphics card dies, it is not likely to do any harm other than causing your system to shut down; however, if your system PSU goes, having the graphics card held at voltage could cause serious damage as power leeches to the system board from the graphics card.

Having built a number of serious workstations where dual PSUs and/or redundant PSUs were employed, a better design is to use one PSU for fans, hard drives & peripherals (where powered independently from the system board) and the other for all system-related electronics.

I second harmann about front doors. That are annoying if they cover the power switch. Really really annoying. Some cases have a door that covers just your cd drives or what not, but you want your power switch to be easily accessible.

Alright, I make some more changes.

I'll go with an Antec case (Nine hundred, maybe)
Bump things up to a 580W PSU
Goin' for the 4890
I'll stick with the i7, since sometimes I do a little bit of dedicated server stuff.
I'm not going with anything other than ASUS for the MoBo.

Once again, thanks for the suggestions!

jw12345 said:

WTF do you have 12 hdds for? Is this is file server? It seems likes you'd want to put storage on a weak tower and hide it away so you don't have the noise of 12 hdds rattling your main pc.

LOL -- Almost. It's a photo-editing workstation configured as follows:

• 2x 150GB WD VelociRaptor in RAID-0, OS & Apps
• 2x 1TB WD Black RE3 in RAID-1, primary work space
• 8x 1.5TB WD Green in RAID-6 (Adaptec 5805 controller), storage
• 3x 1.5TB WD Green (in external Thermaltake BlacX dock) for 3-generation backup of the RAID-0 and RAID-1 drive pairs

So, actually, there are 15 drives; however the 3 backup drives are used one-at-a-time in an external docking station and are not powered by the internal 750-watt power supply.

My graphics card is passively cooled (fanless). I did add two pieces of 1/8-inch thick felt batting to the two side panels of the case. Considering its size and content, the whole system is amazingly quiet. Not silent; but not at all annoying, either. It is significantly quieter than the 2-drive, 3.2GHz P4C system that I recently retired from service.

Does anyone know if my computer (the one I have built here) will be loud or not?