It's that time once again to build a new computer!

Curll

Guest
Jul 13, 2005
9,205
I'll be building a new rig next month or in August geared towards gaming with Vive. I'll be waiting a bit for the new AMD cards to see if there's a better deal.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($297.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Asus Z170-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($150.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($114.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: *A-Data Premier 960GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($192.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: *Hitachi Ultrastar 7K3000 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($71.00 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Founders Edition Video Card ($449.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Corsair 500R Black ATX Mid Tower Case ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: *EVGA 750W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $1437.93
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-06-27 07:16 EDT-0400
 

Couperin47

Member
SoSH Member
Perfectly reasonable choices. Minor comments:

I assume you know the difference between the performance of an i7 or i5 with most games will be virtually nil, but if you want to spend the extra 100 bucks... your call.

The MB is just crammed with quality features, many devoted to overclocking which the cpu won't do and would need an aftermarket cooler, but a cheaper board won't save much and would probably sacrifice the high end audio , so it's still a perfectly reasonable choice...just be aware, you can get a DOA board from any of the big 4 and with so many minor variable models in the current Asus line, I quote from a very recent purchaser of this exact board from Newegg:

"Pros: Seems like a nice board. Mine won't come out of sleep mode, and it always reports an unstable power supply, so it won't boot normally.
Cons: Asus Support said the board should be RMA'd after working with their people on two different occasions. That was back on 4/11/2016. Now, after five weeks, a dozen emails and four more chat sessions, they still haven't been able to send out a replacement board. They have an "Advanced Replacement Program" where they bill your credit card for a replacement board and they simply take yours back to repair. Sounds good, but they claim the don't have the Z170-A board in stock. Weeks later, they say they have it... but it never ships. Check back, they don't have it. Weeks pass, they promise to send a different board. But they don't. Days pass, now they have the board, bill my card. Another week passes, and I call. Nope, they don't have the board in stock. Etc. etc...
Other Thoughts: If the board works, fine. Otherwise their warranty is a joke."

If you read the other reviews there are issues with the backplate fitting and many having issues with all the USB technologies. That might be all driver issues or it might be first iterations of the new chips used to support 3.1. This is somewhat of a cutting edge board.... Fully half those who bought it are having issues, that's high. As you review the comments it's clear this board is being bought by guys like you (not newbies and they know how to build) and the experiences with current Asus customer support are all consistently bad to unspeakable...
Also if you're currently running 8.1 or 10, no issues but these latest Intel chipsets require extra drivers for Win 7. These workarounds are necessary with Intel removing EHCI controllers form the PCH as Win7 does not natively support xHCI. In some cases it's very difficult to install without resorting to the DVD, you can grab an optical drive from some existing build ?

So if you have any issues, you want to get it swapped by while Superbiiz allows (Newegg gives you 30 days, after that you deal with Asus, which doesn't seem like fun atm). It's maddening but it seems to take almost a year for the mb makers to finally produce really reliable boards using the newest chipsets....

JonnyGURU reviewed the 650 and 850 models in the EVGA line, and liked them just fine.

The AData SSD is currently the cheapest "1 Tb class" drive out there. It's not the fastest or highest quality, for that the Samsung 850 EVO is probably tops, but easily $100 more. May I suggest the OCZ Trion 150 ? About the same price, uses newer faster Toshiba flash and a faster Toshiba/Marvell controller...see the comprehensive review: http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/ocz-trion-150-ssd-review-240gb480gb960gb/.
 

Curll

Guest
Jul 13, 2005
9,205
Pulled the trigger on a 1070, shipping Friday. Waiting a few days to order the rest of the build so it arrives together.

Then ordering a Vive next week or the week after.

Urg.

Edit: Yeah, grabbed the mobo and RAM as well from NewEgg. Good deals. Total system will look like:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($234.88 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12S 55.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($61.88 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus Z170 PRO GAMING ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($147.88 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($52.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Sandisk Ultra II 480GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($126.00 @ Amazon)
Storage: Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($48.40 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Founders Edition Video Card ($449.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro ATX Full Tower Case ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($105.98 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($83.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1391.88
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-06-30 10:09 EDT-0400
 
Last edited:

JimBoSox9

will you be my friend?
SoSH Member
Nov 1, 2005
16,667
Mid-surburbia
I badly need to replace my iMac, and I'm torn between wanting to dabble back into PC gaming, and wanting access to Final Cut Pro. If I set up my PC to dual-boot with Windows and Linux, and install an OSX VM in the latter partition, is there anything I'm missing, or does that accomplish the goal? (I realize the VM would take a bit of hacking to make work, but if it's not crazy hard or a performance-killer, it may be worth it)
 

StupendousMan

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 20, 2005
1,909
Okay, my turn to ask for advice. I'm planning to build a workstation for some astronomical image analysis. The images are all pretty small (around 1200 x 2200 pixels), but there will be thousands of them. I've written software to clean them, identify stars, measure properties, etc., but I need a machine which can run through these tasks quickly to keep up with the dataflow (the exposure time will be only 0.5 seconds!).

So, my current thought is "get CPUs with lots of cores", since I can run multiple images in parallel. I've been thinking of getting a pair of Intel Xeon E5-2670; apparently, there are plenty of cheap, second-hand units available from old server farms. My readings tell me that these devices do have a couple of drawbacks:

- may be hard to find a motherboard with space for 2 of these
- they may require a relatively uncommon type of RAM

I haven't put together a machine for about 20 years, so I won't be surprised if I'm heading in the wrong direction. Any guidance or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Oh, and if you can suggest a good video card for some gaming -- for those cloudy nights, of course! -- please do so.
 

jercra

No longer respects DeChambeau
SoSH Member
Jul 31, 2006
3,147
Arvada, Co
Okay, my turn to ask for advice. I'm planning to build a workstation for some astronomical image analysis. The images are all pretty small (around 1200 x 2200 pixels), but there will be thousands of them. I've written software to clean them, identify stars, measure properties, etc., but I need a machine which can run through these tasks quickly to keep up with the dataflow (the exposure time will be only 0.5 seconds!).

So, my current thought is "get CPUs with lots of cores", since I can run multiple images in parallel. I've been thinking of getting a pair of Intel Xeon E5-2670; apparently, there are plenty of cheap, second-hand units available from old server farms. My readings tell me that these devices do have a couple of drawbacks:

- may be hard to find a motherboard with space for 2 of these
- they may require a relatively uncommon type of RAM

I haven't put together a machine for about 20 years, so I won't be surprised if I'm heading in the wrong direction. Any guidance or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Oh, and if you can suggest a good video card for some gaming -- for those cloudy nights, of course! -- please do so.
Is this something you need to do once in a batch or is it something you need to do on an ongoing basis? I ask only because buying a whole computer to do this may not be very cost efficient. Have you ever looked in to AWS Lambda? Between S3 and Lambda you can basically pay a very small amount per image and don't have to worry about buying, maintaining, powering, etc. a machine at home. It may well save you a bunch of money and a bunch of time and effort. Of course, it won't help you with the gaming.
 

Blacken

Robespierre in a Cape
SoSH Member
Jul 24, 2007
12,152
Don't buy a Xeon unless you are running 24/7 server computing. Their primary plus is that they have error-correcting RAM, which isn't significant even for desktop scientific computation. Go grab an i7-6700K or something along those lines, throw however much DDR4 RAM you want into it, be done for the next 4-6 years.

S3 and Lambda are almost certainly not appropriate for this unless you're willing to pay somebody like me to build out the workflow for you; stick with what you know.

For gaming: buy a GTX1070. A 1080 if you might want to play on a 4K television. Done and done.
 

AlNipper49

Huge Member
Dope
SoSH Member
Apr 3, 2001
44,852
Mtigawi
Okay, my turn to ask for advice. I'm planning to build a workstation for some astronomical image analysis. The images are all pretty small (around 1200 x 2200 pixels), but there will be thousands of them. I've written software to clean them, identify stars, measure properties, etc., but I need a machine which can run through these tasks quickly to keep up with the dataflow (the exposure time will be only 0.5 seconds!).

So, my current thought is "get CPUs with lots of cores", since I can run multiple images in parallel. I've been thinking of getting a pair of Intel Xeon E5-2670; apparently, there are plenty of cheap, second-hand units available from old server farms. My readings tell me that these devices do have a couple of drawbacks:

- may be hard to find a motherboard with space for 2 of these
- they may require a relatively uncommon type of RAM

I haven't put together a machine for about 20 years, so I won't be surprised if I'm heading in the wrong direction. Any guidance or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Oh, and if you can suggest a good video card for some gaming -- for those cloudy nights, of course! -- please do so.
The biggest drawback of the older server farms is power consumption.
 

4 6 3 DP

Member
SoSH Member
Oct 24, 2001
2,370
I was thinking this would be a very fun project to make a computer with my son - he's at the age (13) I think he'd really enjoy it.

Could one of you guys who know this well give me a link you'd recommend to make one? I know I can google it, but was thinking maybe one of you had taken this on with a child before.

Thanks!
 

Couperin47

Member
SoSH Member
I was thinking this would be a very fun project to make a computer with my son - he's at the age (13) I think he'd really enjoy it.

Could one of you guys who know this well give me a link you'd recommend to make one? I know I can google it, but was thinking maybe one of you had taken this on with a child before.

Thanks!
Check our thread here: http://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?threads/computer-build-questions-uh-oh.3875/ as a start for issues etc.

The site is also a new important resource showing comparative prices for all the major online sources for hardware as you assemble a projected build:
https://pchound.com/
 

HriniakPosterChild

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 6, 2006
14,841
500 feet above Lake Sammammish
S3 and Lambda are almost certainly not appropriate for this unless you're willing to pay somebody like me to build out the workflow for you; stick with what you know.
Lambda ain't that hard.

He can build a binary of his native code and write a bit of glue in Python to invoke it, and the first zillion transactions each month are free. (I may be off a bit on the pricing. Not by much.)

So he could afford to hire someone like you to build the workflow if he didn't want to roll his own.
 

Blacken

Robespierre in a Cape
SoSH Member
Jul 24, 2007
12,152
Now spend the effort to actually split the data in a way that doesn't result in just paying EC2 costs, and btw still not having a computer to play games. It's gonna end up costing you more than just buying the computer and running the code that already exists. If you are bound and determined to use EC2, then spot instances are a way better way to get the same thing with better throughput without being tied to the hot-garbage restrictions of Lambda (but also have the spin-up and keep-hot concerns that threaten a 500ms round-trip--and, yeah, you can set up queueing and shit to deal with that but then you're paying me even more for something you can just stick under your desk).

ou should not use Lambda under the overwhelming majority of circumstances, but you definitely shouldn't when you actually have a use for the compute you're buying and aren't just making a dating site for cats. Even if Lambda supported a programming language worth a soupy shit for the sort of interrupt-driven processing it enables (and it doesn't), it would be a bad fit for anything that had to grind and anything that has a latency guarantee. I do this work for companies on the regular because they pay for it, but it's not a good idea at all unless somebody else is paying for it.
 

jercra

No longer respects DeChambeau
SoSH Member
Jul 31, 2006
3,147
Arvada, Co
Now spend the effort to actually split the data in a way that doesn't result in just paying EC2 costs, and btw still not having a computer to play games. It's gonna end up costing you more than just buying the computer and running the code that already exists. If you are bound and determined to use EC2, then spot instances are a way better way to get the same thing with better throughput without being tied to the hot-garbage restrictions of Lambda (but also have the spin-up and keep-hot concerns that threaten a 500ms round-trip--and, yeah, you can set up queueing and shit to deal with that but then you're paying me even more for something you can just stick under your desk).

ou should not use Lambda under the overwhelming majority of circumstances, but you definitely shouldn't when you actually have a use for the compute you're buying and aren't just making a dating site for cats. Even if Lambda supported a programming language worth a soupy shit for the sort of interrupt-driven processing it enables (and it doesn't), it would be a bad fit for anything that had to grind and anything that has a latency guarantee. I do this work for companies on the regular because they pay for it, but it's not a good idea at all unless somebody else is paying for it.
Your point about having a computer for other purposes is totally valid and I mentioned that in my initial response. I know it's a off topic but why are you talking EC2 instances and what is supported by Lambda? As HPC said, you compile your code and simply call that code from one of the supported languages. You use S3 to trigger Lambda and S3 to retrieve the results. No EC2 necessary and it should be super fast and very cheap. If the processing is extremely intensive then maybe Lamda doesn't make sense, but it sounded like a fairly low load in the initial ask. Anyway, doesn't sound like the right solution for this particular project, I'm just curious as to the vehemence of your objection.
 

Blacken

Robespierre in a Cape
SoSH Member
Jul 24, 2007
12,152
It's not super fast. It's running on excess compute in EC2 with per-event spin-up times unless you intentionally stagger access (this is what the "serverless" morons think is so revolutionary) and it's usually slower, older-generation instances in the first place. S3 event notifications are slow, too, coupled with the upload/download roundtrips necessary to meet a 500ms deadline.

And, oh yeah: because Lambda is a lock-in piece of shit that nobody, under any circumstances, should use. EC2, Route 53, S3 (and only because other block stores speak the same API), RDS. Use nothing from AWS that is proprietary or you will inevitably regret it.
 

StupendousMan

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 20, 2005
1,909
Don't buy a Xeon unless you are running 24/7 server computing. Their primary plus is that they have error-correcting RAM, which isn't significant even for desktop scientific computation. Go grab an i7-6700K or something along those lines, throw however much DDR4 RAM you want into it, be done for the next 4-6 years.

S3 and Lambda are almost certainly not appropriate for this unless you're willing to pay somebody like me to build out the workflow for you; stick with what you know.

For gaming: buy a GTX1070. A 1080 if you might want to play on a 4K television. Done and done.
Well, it took me a while, but I finally took the plunge. I ended up taking Blacken's advice and going with an i7-6700 and GTX1070. You can find the parts list here:

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/mwrsps@rit.edu/saved/qDBFTW

I just finished putting it together yesterday, and I've installed both Win 7 (games) and Linux (work). I haven't had a chance to do much yet, but did play a bit of the Doom demo level just to see what the graphics card can do. Very nice!

Thanks for all the help. If you want to see pictures showing the gradual construction of the beast, let me know and I'll send you a link. One piece of advice for those who, like me, are attempting their first build in a decade or two: make sure that you connect _all_ the cables to the hard drives, etc., before you install the motherboard (which covers them up and makes it impossible to reach them) :-/
 

cgori

Member
SoSH Member
Oct 2, 2004
4,001
SF, CA
That case looks cool but I don't have a sense of how big it is (obviously it holds an SLI capable ATX motherboard)?
 

StupendousMan

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 20, 2005
1,909
It is 442 x 330 x 423 mm = 17.4 x 13 x 16.7 inches in size. It has plenty of extra space inside, which helped me several times during the construction process.