First build: overwhelmed by case selection

[ratsa]

There are SO many cases out there, I don't even know where to begin looking!

My only frame of reference is my current Dell Studio which I dislike for one reason only: not enough hard drive bays. If it wasn't for that, I would probably keep it.

Is there anything else I should look for in a case?

Here are current specs of the system I'm building:

i7-3770, 32 Gig, not OC
GTX 570 or similar
RAID card
600 watt modular psu
card reader for SD/CF
one DVD-ROM
6-8 internal hard drives (inlcuding SSD)
[it would be nice if one HDD was accessable from the outside for easy replacement]
eSATA, USB 3, audio preferably on the front panel and in the back

Quietness is important!

I know nothing about fans!

 

[mcnumpty23]

all the cases except the 210 should support the 9.5-11.5 gtx 670 so you should be good there. and hahaha snoring in ur living room... sounds like its time to find some warm water to put their hand in mwahahahaha!.

theres only 2 noises that drive me crazy--screaming babies and snoring

and even the bloody cat snores as well so theres 2 of them at it now

 

[rinval]

Rasta im glad we could help 😀

 

[rinval]

theres only 2 noises that drive me crazy--screaming babies and snoring

and even the bloody cat snores as well so theres 2 of them at it now

as i said warm water for the person then when the jump and run to the can pore some on the cat so it just jumps and runs lol.

 

[ratsa]

What's the easiest item to choose:

(1) case;
(2) mobo;
(3) cat.

 

[mcnumpty23]

as i said warm water for the person then when the jump and run to the can pore some on the cat so it just jumps and runs lol.

lol--sounds like something i really should do and film it for youtube

sounds like a good idea but theyre 3 feet from my pc and knowing my luck i know exactly where the warm water would land

 

[rinval]

What's the easiest item to choose:

(1) case;
(2) mobo;
(3) cat.

im not sure what u mean by cat. unfortunatly nothing is easy to choose when it comes to computers. normaly where i start is i figure out exactly everything im planing to do with this perticular machine then start choosing parts that coinside. normally once i figure that out then ill choose my processor that meets my needs ... for video editing you want something hefty like an i7 or fx 8150 overclocked. then you will want a board that can handle the load and the perifials like how many HDD/SSD and sata ports will i need and will the be raid efficient for what i need. etc

that should give you an idea. in my opinion there is no need to waste money on a board that will not be fully utilized. like if your getting a locked processor and not going to over clock then there is no need for that feature and a B or H series board will suit your needs.

 

[rinval]

If you tell me exactly what your going to be doing with your machine and what your budget is total case and all we can try to throw something together for u.

 

[rinval]

lol--sounds like something i really should do and film it for youtube

sounds like a good idea but theyre 3 feet from my pc and knowing my luck i know exactly where the warm water would land

see that is were i would shut down my pc and cover it with a bag then find the water hahaha.

 

[AlderonnX]

take a look at these Lian Li cases 20% off next few days at newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112337

makes it like $63

Adjustable HDD Rack Directly behind the intake fans, six 3.5" HDDs and four 2.5" can be mounted, secured using thumb-screws with rubber-suspension. Users can choose for their HDDs to face forward or backward as desired.

Or without window if you prefer.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112336

 

[ratsa]

If you tell me exactly what your going to be doing with your machine and what your budget is total case and all we can try to throw something together for u.

Is it ok to ask that in this thread?

I will be using this for video and photo editing with Adobe Premiere Pro and Lightroom, professionally but not full time. My budget is $2000 for hardware.

I was advised on video forums that the best set up for hard drives is to have four drives as follows:

(1) OS and programs;
(2) Pagefile and media cache (Not too large);
(3) Photo and video previews (this one has to be FAST and at least a few hundred Gigs);
(4) one or more drives for media (raw and photos and videos). Needs to be fast, but not crazy fast. 4 TB or more.

In the future I may want to RAID drives (2) through (4) together.

Adobe Premiere Pro is GPU accelerated; currently the best "approved" GPUs are GTX 570 and GTX 580. (And some Quadros, which I am disregarding). GPU should not be OC'd, and Premiere only uses one GPU.

The more RAM the better; at least 16 GB.

Multithreaded multi-core CPUs are needed.

Thanks so much!

 

[rufus_22]

I wanted to chime in on this thread but everything I wanted to say has been posted .. + 10 to all .... btw .. I own a Lian li case .. and can vouch for the build quality and the aluminium is beautiful ... and in reguards to the added $$ of there cases... price out aluminium stock compared to steel or plastic and pound for pound the lian li's are actually a savings .... good luck and again .. alot of good advice posted here

 

[rinval]

Is it ok to ask that in this thread?

I will be using this for video and photo editing with Adobe Premiere Pro and Lightroom, professionally but not full time. My budget is $2000 for hardware.

I was advised on video forums that the best set up for hard drives is to have four drives as follows:

(1) OS and programs;
(2) Pagefile and media cache (Not too large);
(3) Photo and video previews (this one has to be FAST and at least a few hundred Gigs);
(4) one or more drives for media (raw and photos and videos). Needs to be fast, but not crazy fast. 4 TB or more.

In the future I may want to RAID drives (2) through (4) together.

Adobe Premiere Pro is GPU accelerated; currently the best "approved" GPUs are GTX 570 and GTX 580. (And some Quadros, which I am disregarding). GPU should not be OC'd, and Premiere only uses one GPU.

The more RAM the better; at least 16 GB.

Multithreaded multi-core CPUs are needed.

Thanks so much!

Intel Core i7-3770 Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116502
BIOSTAR TZ77XE3 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138355
G.SKILL Ares Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231558
EVGA 012-P3-1571-KR GeForce GTX 570 HD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130613
COOLER MASTER CM Storm Series Trooper http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119245
CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX850 V2 850W PSUhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139022
DVD drive http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204
Corsair Force Series GT 120GB SSD (boot drive) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233191
Corsair Force Series 3 60GB SSD (for cache) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233223
OCZ Agility 3 AGT3-25SAT3-360G 2.5" 360GB SSD (for preview) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227790
2x Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL003 2TB 5900 RPM (raw) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148681
6x OKGEAR 24" SATA 6 Gbps Cable http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812123169

comes to 2028.85 plus shipping. and you get 105 back in rebates.

this should give you a good idea of where to start you build obviously you can change parts out as needed. but this pretty well covers everything and gives the option of expand-ability in the future.

now the board only supports 2 sata 3 drives so your 2 drives that require the fastest connections should be there (ie maybe your boot and preview drives and the rest will connect to the sata 2 ports and HDD will never consume all of sata 2 bandwith and whichever SSD makes it here will still have 200+ MBps read and writes.

so there you go GL

 

[ratsa]

Thank you rinval. Can I nit-pick this selection?

(1) CPU-I was thinking about getting 3770K for future-proofing in case I decide to OC in the future. Is that reasonable?

(2) Mobo and RAM--my main concern here is stability. How do I make sure the components will be stable? (Btw, that Biostar mobo seems to have everything I want except eSATA).

(3) PSU: there seem to be a lot of complaints on Newegg about Corsair PSUs, but reviews on other sites seem to be great. Do you know what is going on here?

(4) What are the best brands of SSD? Anything to avoid here?

(5) Is it necessary to replace my SATA cables with 6 Gbps SATA cables?

Thank you!

 

[ratsa]

Best answer selected by ratsa.

 

[rinval]

Thank you rinval. Can I nit-pick this selection?

(1) CPU-I was thinking about getting 3770K for future-proofing in case I decide to OC in the future. Is that reasonable?

(2) Mobo and RAM--my main concern here is stability. How do I make sure the components will be stable? (Btw, that Biostar mobo seems to have everything I want except eSATA).

(3) PSU: there seem to be a lot of complaints on Newegg about Corsair PSUs, but reviews on other sites seem to be great. Do you know what is going on here?

(4) What are the best brands of SSD? Anything to avoid here?

(5) Is it necessary to replace my SATA cables with 6 Gbps SATA cables?

Thank you!

ok sry i have been out of town for my brothers wedding.

1 yes the 3770k will give you a little more time before you need to upgrade but not a huge amount of time. if you are able to overclock then YES get the K series as you can make it faster which will help with encoding recoding etc. but there is not such thing as future proofing a computer as your components will be obsolete in 18months but still may be perfect for what you need them for.

2 G-skill is an extremely high rated ram and i have been running g-skill since the last time i did a full upgrade 6 years ago and never have had any trouble. for the mobo and stability i have read good things about biostar, asrock and asus. that is not saying anyone brand is better than the other. you will need to look at reviews for the specific boards your looking at to see what the best for your build is. biostar are generally stable boards if you only do minor tweaks. if you go seriously crazy tweaking it they have a tendency to become unstable unlike the more expensive brands like ASUS or Gigabyte.

3 i have burnt through alot of power supplys but have never had any trouble out of corsair, seasonic is just as good, next in the list would be thermal-take, antec or OCZ. most of the other brands have a high rate of manufacturer defects.

4 from what ive seen and read Intel, crucial and corsair are all supposed to be good. and that corsair and OCZ Agility 3 are supposed to be very fast. i haven't researched enough on SSD to say exactly what is best and what isnt but that is just from a few quick articles i have read.

5 i was just getting matching cables to keep the look clean and tidy you can use the the cables that come with the board if you would like and dont mind the mitch matched cables..

 

[ratsa]

Thank you. Right now I'm again leaning towards a 6-core i7-3930K system. The incremental cost over an overclocked i7-3770K is about $220 for the CPU and about $150 for the motherboard. I would probably save on the RAM because I would get 8x4Gig instead of 4x8Gig to reach 32Gig. I would buy the same case, psu and fan/heatsink in any event. It almost seems like a no-brainer. And the i7-3930K is in stock. What do you think?

 

[rinval]

Thank you. Right now I'm again leaning towards a 6-core i7-3930K system. The incremental cost over an overclocked i7-3770K is about $220 for the CPU and about $150 for the motherboard. I would probably save on the RAM because I would get 8x4Gig instead of 4x8Gig to reach 32Gig. I would buy the same case, psu and fan/heatsink in any event. It almost seems like a no-brainer. And the i7-3930K is in stock. What do you think?

if you can fit it in your buget the etreme 3930 would be a muck faster processor being that it is 6 core and still can be overclocked. keep in mind though that the 3930 is a sandy bridge processor so you will loose some speed on quick sync but the extra cores should make up for that no question. now if there was an ivy bridge extreme that would be the way to go.