My dad requested a build for his business computer that needed to be stable, reliable, and fast. It was Black Friday that he asked for a quote, so of course by the next day two or three of the deals were gone, but it was a pretty close estimate.
Part List (view below for more info):
- 2x OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSDs
- Intel Core i7 2600k Sandy Bridge (3.4GHz)
- GIGABYTE Intel Z68 USB 3.0 SATA III
- Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
- 4x G-Skill Ripjaws X series GB DDR3 1333
- GeForce GTS 450 (Fermi) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5
- Coolmax 700W ATX 12V v2.2
- APEVIA full tower case
First of all, it needed to be capable of SATA III and USB 3 for speed reasons (most mobos these days are either both or neither, so that part wasn’t hard), so I got the latest core i7 quad core (N82E16819115070)with a Gigabyte Z68 (N82E16813128507) combo ($470).
He wanted a really fast boot up so I got two OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SATA III SSDs (N82E16820227706) and put them in RAID 0 (read more about this later). This was very pricey, costing a solid $380.
For extreme multitasking capabilities, I got a total of 16GB G-Skill Ripjaws X series DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) (2x N82E16820231426) ram for $60.
He also wanted to be able to run business programs well and handle multiple monitors with ease, so I splurged a little and got a GeForce GTS 450 (Fermi) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 (N82E16814134119) for $110. This may be a little bit of overkill for a Business computer but I figured by the time Windows 8 gets replaced, this thing will be getting ancient. Plus, it has 3D vision capabilities and such, which I’m hoping will be the norm in the near future.
Because it’s a business computer that probably wouldn’t be overclocked, I didn’t need a fancy case, so I got an APEVIA full tower (N82E16811144202) for $70 (+$20 shipping).
Windows 7 pro system builder was $140, and a generic CD/DVD burner was $18.
The total cost turned out to be $1335, which is an extremely low price for how fast this computer is.
The Tech Details
First of all, the case was not as good as I hoped in many cases. The default SSD 2.5″ to 3.5″ adapter that came with the vertex didn’t work at all with the “easy to use” no-tools mounting system (which was nice once I grabbed an extra adapter I had laying around). Additionally, these plastic mounting pieces were very fragile. Quite frankly, I don’t completely trust them to hold in a hard drive. The back of the case is VERY flimsy (it’s aluminum), making changing ram sticks surprisingly annoying because the part that the motherboard is screwed into kept bending back and forth while pushing. Other than that, the case was pretty good. The lighting was good looking (not gaudy or anything), and the built-in fan controller was pretty cool (no pun intended). My final take on the case: great deal for the price, which was only $70 + $20 shipping when I got it. Not too great build quality, but I have a feeling Apevia will be pretty good once they fix some of these design issues.
The PSU I got was obviously made for a mid-tower case. There were not many 4-pin fan plugs and the wires were pretty short (I had to put my SSDs on the top part of the drive bay, otherwise the cords would not have reached). It was a surprisingly small PSU (considering I’m used to working with significantly larger ones) which was not a bad thing. The optional plugins are handy, but the fact that there were only three was weird, and one is taken if you want to have a graphics card (there is no graphics power plugin by default, you have to add the SLI optional plug). Even with all of the optional plugs, I had to double up on some of the fan plugs (plug two into one). My take on this PSU: great for a mid-tower but not for a full tower. I would buy it again if I were buying a mid-tower for sure.
This motherboard was great. It fit right into the case, boots up pretty fast, and has a lot of features (which I will go over soon). It has a total of four SATA III and four SATA II connections, which is more than enough in my case. The first thing I did when I booted up was look through the BIOS which was very promising. It had a lot of Overclock settings for the faint of heart or even the experts, with pre-defined settings or manually set options. Changing the RAM clock took almost no time at all. Driver install for this thing was incredibly easy. I popped the CD in, checked which things I wanted to install, and clicked Install, then it lead me to more additional drivers I could choose from. Their Smart 6 tool is awesome. You can choose from different BIOS settings with different users/passwords and different settings, overclock the processor (with a GUI and everything), and more. The Smart 6 overclock tool is really simple, you just click which setting of overclock you want, and it does it and applies the setting at restart. Also, the Intel Smart Response Technology (ISRT) that the motherboard installed was really nice for RAID management. It let me set up new raid volumes, manage drives, change the RAID type of predefined RAID volumes (I sent it right from RAID 1 to RAID 0 with no difficulty), and more with a nice GUI too. My final take on the motherboard: great deal for any one! I would certainly buy one again.
As usual G-Skill is awesome. I’ve had over 60 GB worth of 4GB sticks from them and haven’t had a problem with any of them yet.
Now for the fun part: the SSDs. These things are FAST. They worked right out of the box (no firmware updates or anything). I set them up in RAID 1 (changed later) at first for redundancy, which gave me ~112GB of disk space, and when I ran Crystal Disk Mark, I was pretty happy with the results: 700MB/s seq read and 133MB/s seq write. Note that in RAID 1, the total disk space is the size of the highest disk size (112GB), but if one drive fails, the other can keep going. Then I switched them to RAID 0 for speed, which gave me a good 224GB of disk space and rocked a solid 815MB/s seq read and 322MB/s seq write! While installing Windows 7, the “Copying Windows Files” section went straight from 0% to 100% hitting no point in between in a split second. I thought that was pretty amusing. With no software optimization (e.g. registry edits) Windows went from BIOS to login in 8 seconds flat (the average windows installation usually takes about 20 seconds).
Windows Experience Index:
Processor: 7.6 (before any overclock)
Memory: 7.6 (before any overclock)
Graphics: 7.0
Gaming Graphics: 7.0
Primary Hard Disk: 7.9
Windows Experience Index measures performance on a scale of 1.0 to 7.9
Overall: loved the build! Crazy fast, no problems with setups. The bottleneck: graphics (not a problem in this case).
He’s running dual monitors right now, but I might add a second graphics card (probably just a $50 generic one) for another two (total of four).
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