Anyway to get this custom build around $2,000?

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ComposerRyan

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Feb 25, 2014
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Hey guys,

I have been out here a couple of times and appreciate everyone's help so far. I am going to be building my first custom computer soon and I am a total noob when it comes to building a computer from the ground up.

So, to begin, this is why I am building my computer: I am wanting a Digital Audio Workstation and it will require A LOT of RAM (32 GBs or even more) due to the sample libraries required for creating music. I am also looking to get a nice video card since I want to use Adobe After Effects and also game as well.

This is a brief rundown of what I believe I need:

1) Intel i7 Processor

2) Motherboard that can handle 32gb-64gb RAM (it needs 32 GBs minimum for the samples believe it or not and needs to support multiple SSD hard drives)

3) Powerful graphics card (for adobe after effects 3D video)

4) SSD Hard Drives (for the audio samples of course )

5) Powerful soundcard

6) A nice case

7) Power supply that can handle it all

I will leave this info posted here as I find the parts (thanks to your help of course! ):

CASE: [to be decided]

MOTHERBOARD: [to be decided]

RAM: [to be decided]

OS: Windows 7 or 8

CPU: [to be decided]

Video Card: [to be decided]

Sound Card: [to be decided]

Hard Drive: [to be decided, must be SSD]

I have watched many videos out there and heard the best place to start is with the motherboard. Of course, I am looking for something very powerful with no bottlenecking but, like everyone else, I don't want to spend too much.

What motherboard do you guys recommend? I realize it is the heart of the PC, so your suggestions would be very helpful.
 
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Several questions come to mind:

1. Socket 1150 CPUs/mobos can only accommodate a MAX of 32 GB RAM, if you are looking to go beyond 32 GB you are probably going to want socket 2011 which is considerably more expensive. Up to 32 GB or beyond 32 GB?

2. How large of a case are you wanting? mid-tower, full-tower, ultra-tower?

3. Will you want air or water cooling?

4. How many SSDs and at what capacity? Are you looking to run them in RAID or as standalones?

5. Do you have a Micro Center store near you?
 
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Thanks for the help and those are some good questions that I should've answered in my previous post. Here are my answers on that...



For now, I will stick with just the 32 GBs, but out of curiosity, how much of a price difference is it from a 32GB motherboard to a 64 GB motherboard? And I'm sure the CPU would have to be different too then?

2. How large of a case are you wanting? mid-tower, full-tower, ultra-tower?
Click to expand...
Well, I'm not too sure. I want something that can always be expanded for future use. What do you recommend? I would assume I would need full or ultra tower?

3. Will you want air or water cooling?
Click to expand...
I would prefer air cooling since I've gotten opinions on water cooling and heard it can be a pain to deal with. So air cooling it is.

4. How many SSDs and at what capacity? Are you looking to run them in RAID or as standalones?
Click to expand...
These will be standalone, as I don't think RAID is even nessecary. So I would probably need 2x 500gb SSD drives (the sample libraries are huge...just one sample library is 310 GBs!)

5. Do you have a Micro Center store near you?
Click to expand...
Just checked and unfortunately they are not here in Arizona.

Thanks again for the help!
 
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I suggest you go with a brand name Z87 motherboard and a full tower case so you have lots of room for your SSDs and HDDs.
And at least 650 watts on the power supply considering 4 sticks of ram, 4 s/hdds, one vid card, and one sound card.
Of course you'll want USB 3.0 and perhaps ESATA or Thunderbolt on the motherboard, depending on your needs.
I usually spend a max of $80 on the case and $80 on the cpu cooler and that's worked for me so far.
Happy Building!
 
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PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i7-4930K 3.4GHz 6-Core Processor ($568.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme 99.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($84.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock X79 Extreme6 ATX LGA2011 Motherboard ($223.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Corsair Dominator 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($251.98 @ Best Buy)
Storage: Crucial M500 960GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($439.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: Asus Radeon R7 240 2GB Video Card ($69.24 @ Amazon)
Case: Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair Enthusiast 650W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: LG GH24NSB0 DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro - 64-bit (OEM) (64-bit) ($137.97 @ OutletPC)
Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Zx 24-bit 192 KHz Sound Card ($109.99 @ Best Buy)
Total: $2022.10
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-03-16 22:14 EDT-0400)

The water cooling is closed-loop so it shouldn't give you any problems.
 
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^Thanks for putting that together and it seems like a very good deal for all of that, especially with the SSD hard drives and 32 GBs RAM included in that price!

I did have a question about the RAM. It said it was "1600"...what does this number mean exactly? I thought "2400" was better? Or does it even make a difference?
 
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don't buy that.
mastrom101 has mentioned a 240 for you. that's not a very good card, considering the fact that you are going for 32GB ram.
 
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PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($309.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($29.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Asus Maximus VI Hero ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($179.79 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Dominator 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($251.98 @ Best Buy)
Storage: A-Data XPG SX900 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($129.99 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($54.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB Video Card ($689.80 @ Mwave)
Case: Raidmax ATX-298WBP ATX Mid Tower Case w/500W Power Supply ($72.98 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 - 64-bit (OEM) (64-bit) ($97.26 @ OutletPC)
Sound Card: Asus Xonar Phoebus 24-bit 96 KHz Sound Card ($198.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Other: ASUS DSL-N12E Wireless N ADSL Modem Router ($55.00)
Total: $2070.75
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-03-17 05:14 EDT-0400)


if you can buy a 600W PSU then its good. the psu that comes with the case provides 25W more than the required amount, so it restricts overclocking

an ssd hdd combination is always better.
if you can config raid then connect the ssd in raid 0, which his fast but not safe, and connect the hdd in raid 1, which is slow yet safe, and take a backup of the ssd on a nighly basis or atleast a weekly basis.

use the ssd to install os and important applications, and the ssd to store all other data.
 
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That's a great list for the price you got it at - thanks! By the way, does windows come in a Pro, Professional, and Ultimate versions? I could not tell what version of Windows 8.1 that is and I've heard that only certain versions of Windows support the 32 GBs or more RAM.
 
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According to the Microsoft website, win 8 (regular) supports up to 128 GB while win 8 pro supports up to 512 GB.

As for motherboards, there is only one socket 1150 motherboard that supports up to 64 GB of memory, not sure if it would meet your needs:

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-motherboard-b85mg43

here are your choices for a socket 2011 motherboard:

http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/motherboard/#s=21&K=4,10&N=4,12&T=65536,131072&sort=a8

a socket 1150 i7 4771 will run you about $300, an affordable socket 2011 i7 will run anywhere between $320 and $580

Let me know which direction you think you might want to go and I can put together a build for you to look over. I didn't mention the i7 4770k since all the Z87 mobos I could find had a 32 GB max RAM capability.
 
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I believe 1600 is the highest officially supported memory speed for the i7 processor. You can go higher with overclocking.
i7 Processor specs

In the end, RAM speed doesn't speed things up a great deal...its really fast anyway.
 
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Thanks once again for the helpful info about the motherboards and the RAM guys!

Looking at it closer, I think it would be better to go with the motherboards that support up to 64 GB of memory (socket 2011). I know they are more expensive, but I have a feeling with the samples I'll be dealing with that in the future they could end up using over 32 GBs for one composition (yes, I know that's crazy but that's what many of the musicians on the soundsonline.com site are recommending.)

I definitely don't want to get a cheap, junky motherboard since it will be the "heart" of the PC since the main problem with my current PC is the motherboard and I do not want to upgrade it since it will require new case, new power supply, etc. It would be better to just build a new PC and give my current on to my bro, which he would be very happy about because his PC broke down recently. :)
 
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you don't need a 2011 ZIF socket motherboard it you are intend to use it for gaming.
however if it is for developing purposes (using applications line davinci, photoshop, after effects, 3d max etc which are highly multi threaded) then 2011 is your choice.

the advantage of 2011 is more cores and more ram. you wont benefit from these factors in gaming.

another disadvantage of 2011 is lack of processors better than the 4770K

only the 4930k is better than the 4770k.
otherwise you have to go for the most expensive i7 extreme edition processors. Out of which the 3970X and the 4960X performs better.(these costs around $1000).

the choice is yours. select the 1150 processors, save money, get performance or buy the 2011 processors, waste a lot of money, and be ready for the future(in the future games and all applications will be multi core optimised)
 
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You know your stuff!

The computer will be mainly used for development purposes and does need to be ready for the next 5 years so it would be great to get the 2011 motherboard and I think the extra money would be worth it down the road since the main issue that I'm dealing with now is the motherboard and limitations on RAM. Plus, it would be nice to have access to 64GB RAM since I will be adding more and more samples to my compositions in the future and have seen many specifications posted and many people use above 32 GBs of RAM when doing their compositions. How "future proof" do you think the 2011 motherboard is?
 
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ram speed does make a lot of difference.

ok I can hear people already disagreeing, let me finish.

higher frequency ram performance is inferior than lower frequency ram due to increase in system latency (time taken by the ram to respond to a request from the processor).

my personal choice is to go for a 1600 or 1866 Mhz ram, which performs the best out of all the ram ranging from 1333-3000 Mhz
 
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To a certain extent, I do agree. My choice of RAM is 1866MHz CAS 9. My point is that in real world use, one probably won't be able to tell the difference between 1600MHz and 1866MHz, CAS 9 and CAS 10, etc. At 8 GB it may be worth it just out of preference, but for 32 GB I wouldn't pay much extra for RAM speed.
 
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Hey guys,

I decided to repart out the PC on pcpartpicker.com with the proper 2011 motherboard. Please let me know what you think of this:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3gy4F

You'll notice that the soundcard is missing and I am asking the guys over at soundsonline.com if I can use my existing soundcard (E-MU 1011 PCIe soundcard) or if I need to upgrade it for the audio samples I'll be working with.

So, what do you guys think about that configuration? Is the cooler good enough for the CPU? And does everything look compatible and okay? As you can tell by those questions, I'm a complete noob.

Thanks again guys for your help with this!
 
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Hey guys, I actually found iBuyPower.com recently (I have heard of them) and they actually have very good prices for March Madness. I was able to configure a PC that was only $100 more and very similar (includes free shipping and prebuilt.) Do you think they are reliable? They allowed me to configure motherboard with 32 GBs RAM as well as add SSD drives that I wanted at a reasonable price but I'm wondering if there's a catch. Seems like the reviews are overall positive and I'm actually going to call them tomorrow.
 
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