Building a New Desktop

[GeorgeH]

That was WRT the Intel-branded motherboard, not the CPU.

@Cerbie: Yep, replacing the Intel bits with PII would get you a cheaper system with a better absolute price/performance ratio. However, the i5 has 2 benefits specific to the OP's needs. One is turbo mode, which will make the system feel snappier in light everyday usage. The second is lower power consumption, which means less heat to dissipate and a potentially quieter system. That the i5 is also faster than the PII in Photoshop and the like is really more of a bonus. I'm not saying a PII/AMD PC would be a bad choice (my last build was an OC'd 940) just that the i5 falls within the budget and might be a better way to spend ~$600.

[Axman]

OK, PII is an acronym for Pentium II and I can't let you keep using it like that.

[SlyReaper]

OK, PII is an acronym for Pentium II and I can't let you keep using it like that.

Pentium II chips haven't been around for years. Phenom II chips are current, so PII now means Phenom II.

[Axman]

I have equal numbers of each in my office.

[stephentyrone]

I'm with Ax. The fact that you crazy kids are too young to remember PII doesn't mean you get to use the term for whatever the heck you feel like.

Alternatively: get off the lawn.

[2.71828183]

GeorgeH: Thanks for taking the time to compile that list.

Processor:
The i5 and Phenom II 945 low-power (the one I'm getting) have the same maximum power rating of 95W. I don't know which one idles more efficiently, because all the reviews I've read that directly compare the two use the 125W version of the Phenom, and usually the higher-clocked 965. Assuming that the 95W Phenom scales back linearly, they look pretty comparable w.r.t. power consumption.

I looked at a bunch of benchmarks, and I don't really know what to make of them. Most were comparing the 965 with the i5; the i5 did way better on quite a few things, comparable on quite a few things, and way worse on a few things. One was a "multitasking" test in which the i5 lost out by a wide margin. The Phenom is clocked significantly higher, but the i5 clearly gets more done per clock cycle. Out of curiosity, what's the difference that lets it do that (other than the TurboBoost, because I understand how that works and it doesn't account for all the performance discrepancy), and what operations can the i5 do better at as a result?

I finally found some pictures of the stock HSF's that ship with the two processors (not nearly as easy as getting benchmark data; everyone seems to benchmark with aftermarket heatsinks), and while the AMD offering is a decent chunk of copper with a few heatpipes sticking out of it, the Intel HSF looks almost identical to the aluminum extrusion that came with my P4 years ago. (That's Pentium 4, by the way.) That processor ran hot and failed prematurely. I stuck a fairly cheap aftermarket heatsink on the replacement processor and it cut 20-25°C off the temps, and the second one ran fine for years (in fact, it's still going). Also, that HSF wasn't particularly quiet. Probably because the high temps made the fan stay on at high speed all the time.

So, I'm figuring I'll need an aftermarket HSF if I go with the i5, and since I don't see any integrated graphics coming with LGA 1156 motherboards, I'll also have to factor in the cost of a graphics card. That puts the price of processor+motherboard at $340 minimum for the i5 (call it $360 for a decent, quiet graphics card), versus $260 for the Phenom. So, the big question: does the i5 perform that much better, to make it worth an extra $100? Most of the benchmarks seemed to indicate it was a considerably faster processor, but that low "multitasking" benchmark makes me think that real-world performance may reflect differently. Right now, I'm leaning towards the Phenom.

HDD:

With regards to your backup situation and RAID, you really won't notice RAID1 being faster than a single drive. The thing with SSDs that make them "feel" fast is their random access performance, which RAID1 isn't going to improve to any noticeable degree. I understand your desire to have a constant "backup" with RAID1, but RAID1 will only help with drive failure and is not really a backup - you should still be doing a *real* backup to another device anyway.

I would think the RAID controller would be smart enough to take a queue of random reads and parcel them out evenly between the drives, which would raise the access speed when spread over multiple files. Seek time is still there, but two drives are seeking different things at the same time. If it can't do that, either I'm missing some technical reason why it can't be done that way, or that's remarkably bad design. I understand it still won't compare to SSD speed, but you're saying it won't even be faster for small reads, and I don't understand why not. If I correctly understand how RAID works, it should be on average twice as fast, minus some small overhead and inefficiency.

Also, of all the hard drives I've owned, every one has either failed mechanically or is still in use. I've never had data corruption in software bad enough to lose a whole drive worth of files (though I have had to boot into another drive and retrieve the files manually). I typically get about three years per drive before they fail, though a couple have died within a year or so, or lasted 4-5 years. Now, some of this is dating back to when 30GB was a big hard drive, so they may be made better nowadays, but still: Even irreparably corrupting the OS shouldn't destroy data like a head crash does. So, yes, I'll do a tertiary backup, but from my perspective, protecting against hardware failure is no small thing.

RAM:
Okay. That particular RAM is out of stock right now, but if it doesn't get back in stock before I order, I can find something similar. Checking compatibility with the motherboard isn't hard, and I like the lower price.

PSU:
I definitely like the price. I saw that earlier, but apparently they added an extra $20 rebate since I last looked at it. Now, my question: Is 400W enough if I, at some point in the future, add a reasonably power-hungry graphics card like a 5750? I don't want the PSU to be running near its limit, because that's noisy and less efficient. I plugged in the values to a couple of online calculators and they said 450 to 500 watts, but I know those calculators over-estimate things to be on the safe side. How much wattage does a graphics card like that actually need? (I think the ATX specs say it can't draw more than 75W from the power connector and 75W from the motherboard, so that would be 150W. Add in 100 for a processor, maybe 30 for a pair of hard drives, 50 for the motherboard, another 50 for fans, optical, and misc., and that gives me 380W, which is awfully close to the limit. I don't know how accurate my estimates are, though.)

Case
I don't really like that case. Searching cheap cases, I found this (I swear I'm not a paid representative of Gigabyte), which has a bottom-mount PSU and takes 120mm fans. It's also rather ugly, but I don't particularly care what it looks like. My problem is, it doesn't soft-mount the drives. I hate to pay so much more just for that, but those hard mounting points are usually right up flush with the drives, which means I'd have to modify the sheetmetal to add rubber grommets. I'm not too reluctant to do some surgery on a brand new case if it's a dirt cheap one, but that isn't a very straightforward fix. I haven't found anything local (in retail stores that I can search online, rather) but a couple of overpriced flashy "gamer" cases, and I can't find anything at all under the $50 price point that has soft-mounted drives.

Optical:
That drive looks identical to the one I specified, and it's the same price, so might as well. Probably made by the same factory anyway.

So the only things so far I've saved money on are the RAM and PSU, which together save me $36. Worth saving, but not enough to cover the upgrade cost to i5. Unless I can find a cheaper case with soft-mounted drives, and even then I think I'd rather pocket the extra money.

Sorry for the huge essay of a post, but all this discussion really is helping me out.

[cerbie]

I looked at a bunch of benchmarks, and I don't really know what to make of them. Most were comparing the 965 with the i5; the i5 did way better on quite a few things, comparable on quite a few things, and way worse on a few things. One was a "multitasking" test in which the i5 lost out by a wide margin. The Phenom is clocked significantly higher, but the i5 clearly gets more done per clock cycle. Out of curiosity, what's the difference that lets it do that (other than the TurboBoost, because I understand how that works and it doesn't account for all the performance discrepancy), and what operations can the i5 do better at as a result?

Intel has really fast cache (and has had for basically ever). AMD won big time with Hypertransport (RIP Alpha?), and has had an integral multicore design for a few more years. Also, AMD has a truly new design coming out in a year or two (I think 2011), and is probably more than happy to make thinner margins of current chips, and keep the big push on GPGPU development and the new one.

I finally found some pictures of the stock HSF's that ship with the two processors (not nearly as easy as getting benchmark data; everyone seems to benchmark with aftermarket heatsinks), and while the AMD offering is a decent chunk of copper with a few heatpipes sticking out of it, the Intel HSF looks almost identical to the aluminum extrusion that came with my P4 years ago. (That's Pentium 4, by the way.) That processor ran hot and failed prematurely. I stuck a fairly cheap aftermarket heatsink on the replacement processor and it cut 20-25°C off the temps, and the second one ran fine for years (in fact, it's still going). Also, that HSF wasn't particularly quiet. Probably because the high temps made the fan stay on at high speed all the time.

The new ones are a bit quieter, thanks to much cooler chips, but not as quiet as AMD's stock ones, and they still have that resonant hum in the noise character, that seems to carry out of a case really well. AMD had really bad ones with socket A, and seemed to have really taken a liking to slower fans, and more thermal mass . You can always move up to a better HSF, but stock v. stock, on noise, AMD's win. If looking to go Intel, and wanting a not-so-over-the-top 3rd-party HSF, Arctic Cooling's HSFs w/ their FDB PWM fans are pretty nice (enough TLAs for ya?).

So, I'm figuring I'll need an aftermarket HSF if I go with the i5, and since I don't see any integrated graphics coming with LGA 1156 motherboards, I'll also have to factor in the cost of a graphics card. That puts the price of processor+motherboard at $340 minimum for the i5 (call it $360 for a decent, quiet graphics card), versus $260 for the Phenom. So, the big question: does the i5 perform that much better, to make it worth an extra $100? Most of the benchmarks seemed to indicate it was a considerably faster processor, but that low "multitasking" benchmark makes me think that real-world performance may reflect differently. Right now, I'm leaning towards the Phenom.

IMO, if you have to go with lesser other parts, no. Both are damn fast. If you're not into overclocking, and/or don't have a killer app where they differ a great deal, you won't end up thinking, "I wish I'd gone with the other chip vendor." If you're thinking about increasing your budget, though, seriously consider Intel. Intel has great stuff, they know it, and they have excess older 775 parts to get rid of, since the i5 was kinda late...so they price accordingly.

[GeorgeH]

I'm with Ax. The fact that you crazy kids are too young to remember PII doesn't mean you get to use the term for whatever the heck you feel like.

Yep, I never had the pleasure of personally owning a Pentium II - I went straight from a Cyrix 5x86 to an Athlon. The first few times I saw "PII" for Phenom I got confused too, but when it's clear from context which chip is being referenced I think it’s fine; it has been over a decade since the last Pentium II was released, after all.

@e:
RAID1 - I'm still of the opinion that it's a waste if you're on any kind of a budget. If your PC goes down for a couple of days it'd be annoying, sure, but it's not as if it's a mission-critical server or some such. WRT performance, if your HD's have a ~10ms random access time, I'd expect RAID1 would get you ~8.5ms. If they give you ~100MB/s reads, expect ~110MB/s in RAID1. So RAID1 is faster, but if I blindfolded you it would be nearly impossible to tell the difference without running a benchmark - or about the same difference you'd get going to a slightly faster single drive. This is another reason why I'd go with a higher quality drive with a (hopefully) greater MTBF and lower initial failure rate over 2 lower quality drives in RAID1. It's your money and peace of mind, though.

i5/PHENOM II :
Power consumption - At idle or low loads, the i5 is going to consume 50-60w less than the 945. With all 4 cores tapped out, the i5 might consume 10-20w less, but depending upon motherboards and peripherals it could just as easily be a wash.

HSF - The Phenom cooler is very nice, no doubt; I believe it's very similar (if not identical) to the one they ship with the much hotter 965, so you are getting more than you need. That said, the i5 cooler will work just fine; Intel hasn't been in the space heater business since the Prescott days.

Performance - You've seen the benchmarks, so you know where the i5 lies (and cerbie already covered the cache speed/size differences that cause weirdness in some benchmarks.) The thing the benchmarks don't show, though, is the "snappiness" Turbo Mode will give you - it's a hard thing to quantify, but Lynnfield parts just "feel" quicker than Phenom II parts under light everday loads. That's not to say that Phenom II is slow or substandard in any way (you'll be completely blown away by it's performance if you're coming from a P4), just that you'll be blown away a tiny bit less than you would be with an i5.

Bottom line, you will not be unhappy or regret going with a 945. If you're going to spend $600, though, the i5 would be a nice upgrade.

PSU - A quality 400W supply will still be fine for a 5750 without stressing out. If you want to OC, do Crossfire/SLI, or go with a hungrier CPU or Chipset (eg. Phenom II 965, X58) you'd need to step up but for the components you're considering 400W will be just fine (although I wouldn't go any lower than that.)

Case - I hear you, the case I listed is a joke, and that Gigabyte is much better. I really wouldn't worry about soft mounting the drives; it's a nice feature, but I've never been terribly convinced those little rubber grommets really do much of anything unless you've got crappy hard drives. So long as the drive cage is reasonably substantial and affixed firmly to the case, I wouldn't worry about it. WRT flashy cases, all I can say is the PC shops in your area suck.

Optical - The takeaway there is don't buy your DVD burner from Newegg. Shop around a little if the $10 you can save is worth your time.

[cerbie]

PII: I went from a 386 to a Cyrix PR150+ (what a PoS) to a K6-II (with some kind of decent chipset, but godawful AT board layout) to a Duron to an Athlon XP. My C2D desktop is only my 2nd personal Intel rig.

but Lynnfield parts just "feel" quicker than Phenom II parts under light everday loads.

I seem to notice Windows slower than Linux equal to FreeBSD slower than RT Linux (Arch i686) or BFS Linux (Arch i686) slower than DeLi, more than anything else in daily use, until the load gets heavy, provided it's a proper dually or better (>= S939 A64X2). But, it could mostly be from Windows' UI always feeling sluggish, and *n*x/X GUIs almost always feeling faster, insulating me from subtleties of Windows v. Windows .

[2.71828183]

P4, no. That's now my dad's computer (he's got poor enough high frequency hearing not to be bothered by the screech of the failing case fan bearings; the thing drives me crazy even when I'm in a completely different room). I'm currently running a 2.0GHz Turion X2 on my laptop, which honestly didn't feel like much of an upgrade from the P4 at a single core of 2.2GHz. Probably because the laptop runs Vista with mostly 2009-era programs, whereas the P4 ran 2000 (XP now, but 2000 when it was mine) with mostly 2004-era programs.

Before that, it was a 733MHz AMD Duron with the same case as the P4 is currently in, which actually wasn't the original case. Several of the Duron system's parts were replaced shortly after I originally got it, before I figured out that the problem was the crappy PSU attached to the original case. Shades of Ship of Theseus, I suppose: even though all of the components in that computer have been replaced at least once, and most two or three times (it's gone through . . . uh, I think six hard drives, but I seem to have terrible luck with those. Maybe not a fair test, because it didn't go through that many sequentially; there were usually two drives hooked up at once, and I think one of the deaths was the bad PSU's fault, not the drive's fault), I still think of it as the same computer. Before that, there was an ancient family Dell, which still works and is still being used despite the fact that it's probably got significantly less processing power than an average modern cell phone. I have no clue what the processor is in it, but it's roughly two technological generations older than the Duron. There was an even older computer than that, but I was too young when we had it to know anything significant about it.

RAID1 - I'm still of the opinion that it's a waste if you're on any kind of a budget. If your PC goes down for a couple of days it'd be annoying, sure, but it's not as if it's a mission-critical server or some such. WRT performance, if your HD's have a ~10ms random access time, I'd expect RAID1 would get you ~8.5ms. If they give you ~100MB/s reads, expect ~110MB/s in RAID1. So RAID1 is faster, but if I blindfolded you it would be nearly impossible to tell the difference without running a benchmark - or about the same difference you'd get going to a slightly faster single drive. This is another reason why I'd go with a higher quality drive with a (hopefully) greater MTBF and lower initial failure rate over 2 lower quality drives in RAID1. It's your money and peace of mind, though.

. . . Yeah, that's pretty underwhelming performance. I was expecting, maybe not double, but somewhere in the ballpark of double performance. I still don't understand what technical barriers prevent RAID 1 from working like I expected it to (where's the bottleneck?), but performance gains that low aren't worth the cost.

I really can't be stuck without a working computer in the middle of a semester for any length of time, because the bulk of my coursework is online, and having to go across campus and spend a couple hours a day in the open computer labs would be a major pain. That's part of the logic behind building this computer now. Then again, once this one is built, I'll have a working spare in my laptop, so I can afford to have the main one down for a bit if I have to.

Bottom line, you will not be unhappy or regret going with a 945. If you're going to spend $600, though, the i5 would be a nice upgrade.

PSU - A quality 400W supply will still be fine for a 5750 without stressing out. If you want to OC, do Crossfire/SLI, or go with a hungrier CPU or Chipset (eg. Phenom II 965, X58) you'd need to step up but for the components you're considering 400W will be just fine (although I wouldn't go any lower than that.)

Good to both of those. I still haven't decided 100%, but I think I'll save my money and go with the budget track.

Case - I hear you, the case I listed is a joke, and that Gigabyte is much better. I really wouldn't worry about soft mounting the drives; it's a nice feature, but I've never been terribly convinced those little rubber grommets really do much of anything unless you've got crappy hard drives. So long as the drive cage is reasonably substantial and affixed firmly to the case, I wouldn't worry about it. WRT flashy cases, all I can say is the PC shops in your area suck.

Optical - The takeaway there is don't buy your DVD burner from Newegg. Shop around a little if the $10 you can save is worth your time.

For both of these, I asked my parents to do some looking in person. I suspect that there are plenty of options, they're just not on the retailers' websites. Empty computer cases aren't shiny things that attract a lot of customers. Ergo, the only ones that make the website are the ones with blinky things on them. And saving ~$15 extra shipping plus getting a cheaper case would be a good thing.

Hmm, if I can't find soft drive mounts in a cheap case, maybe I should just bolt a couple pounds of lead to either side of the drive bay. The mass would certainly damp out a good bit of vibration, and I have ~75lbs of lead and all the tools to cast it to shape on hand.

[Pinky's Brain]

The rubber grommits on my P182 make an absolutely huge difference in noise (Spinpoint T166, never measured if they bugger up the access times though). I know this because it's a bit finicky with the even distribution of pressure (ie. overturning/underturning screws, also had a bunch of cables bunched up behind the HD cause a large increase in coupled noise).

You can DIY an elastic suspension in a 5.25 slot, but the HD won't have any airflow unless you add a fan.

[Axman]

Suspending hard drives affects performance and greatly increases seek times. By securing them the heads are more accurate.

[SlyReaper]

Of course, the better solution is an SSD which creates no noise at all.

[2.71828183]

Suspending hard drives affects performance and greatly increases seek times. By securing them the heads are more accurate.

Yikes. Okay, that's a pretty unacceptable consequence, especially because if the heads are moving inaccurately, that would probably somewhat increase the likelihood of a head crash or other bad stuff.

What about my idea of using weight to dampen vibrations transmitted to the case? Any other clever DIY anti-vibration measures that still keep the drive secure? Or am I pretty much in uncharted territory on this one?

Of course, the better solution is an SSD which creates no noise at all.

Unfortunately, that's not within my budget. I figure, though, by the time I get around to doing this again, SSDs will be the de facto standard for desktop applications, and cheap enough to put in a budget/midrange build. Not this time, though.

So, hard drives.
If I'm not doing RAID, I need something reasonably fast, reasonably quiet, and reliable. (All of the drives I'm currently looking at are 7200 RPM and half a terabyte.)

The Samsung Spinpoint F3 is supposed to be all that, plus it's cheap. Reviews put it quieter than the WD drives, and I can't tell any difference in reliability from what I've read.

Then WD Caviar Black is the next step up, and it's got a better warranty (though fat lot of good that does me if my data's on there when it goes), though it may be noisier. It has twice the cache and dual processors, which I'm not sure what that will translate to in terms of performance.

Then there's the WD RE3, which is supposed to be an enterprise class drive with higher reliability standards. It's been rated a little noisier than the Caviar Black, and it's getting kind of pricey for a 500GB drive. It's supposed to have vibration-compensation features for use in arrays with other drives, which may make it last longer. Performance looks comparable to the Caviar Black. Is this actually a more reliable drive, or just marked up for features I don't need?

Right now, I'm leaning towards the F3, which is cheap and (supposedly) quieter than the others. I didn't see any reliability difference in the reviews, but if somebody knows differently . . . ?

I could also get a 2.5" notebook drive for much lower noise, but I don't think the price and performance hits are going to justify it.

Also, RAM: I thought I had this one covered. However: I took a good look on Newegg and the only ones on my motherboard's compatibility list were at least as expensive as the RAM I'd already specified. And I was really hoping to save money there . . .
RAM compatibility table

Updated component list:
AMD Phenom II 945 95W processor for $165.99
Gigabyte µATX motherboard with onboard video for $94.99
Acronis True Image Home for $7.99
G.SKILL 2x2GB RAM for $99.99
Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB HDD for $54.99
Corsair 400W PSU for $29.99
Gigabyte Luxo case for $29.99
2x Scythe 120mm 800RPM fans for $7.89 each
Lite-On optical drive for $33.99
Windows 7 Home Premium for $29.99

Total is $563.69 plus $24.36 shipping, for a total of $588.05. Not bad. I'd still like to find cheaper compatible RAM, though.

[cerbie]

Suspending hard drives affects performance and greatly increases seek times. By securing them the heads are more accurate.

Yikes. Okay, that's a pretty unacceptable consequence, especially because if the heads are moving inaccurately, that would probably somewhat increase the likelihood of a head crash or other bad stuff.

What about my idea of using weight to dampen vibrations transmitted to the case? Any other clever DIY anti-vibration measures that still keep the drive secure? Or am I pretty much in uncharted territory on this one?

A case w/ plastic rails (OK), grommet-mounts (better), and then using a drive that doesn't vibrate too badly, are the simplest and best ways to do it. 2.5" is also a fair option.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article8-page1.html
http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/vi ... php?t=8240

See: http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/vi ... hp?t=19147

I'd still like to find cheaper compatible RAM, though.

Get cheaper RAM. Compatibility lists are always out of date. A-Data, G.SKill. Crucial, Corsair (most of the first page of 2x2GB DDR3)--all good stuff.

[2.71828183]

Browsing the SPCR forums (those links and a few other threads) have led me to conclude a few things w.r.t. quiet hard drives:

-There isn't really a consensus as to whether or not soft-mounting via suspension or rubber grommets is bad for the drives or reduces performance. Lots of anecdotes, but nothing I would really call data. And the manufacturers' recommendations seem to be of two minds about it, depending on which ones you listen to. Therefore, it could be bad.

-Effective methods of quieting transmittable vibrations include elastic suspension, certain enclosure options, and rigidly mounting the drive to something massive. This last one is generally viewed as impractical. Rubber grommets are generally viewed as less effective, and hard-mounting to the case is the worst of all.

-From the drive's perspective, the most rigid mounting is achieved by securing it to something massive. Hard-mounting to the case is next most, then rubber grommets, then elastic suspension as the least rigid. Semi-rigid mounts may be worse than completely free mounts if the spring action occurs on the same timescales as the seek movements.

-Hard drives should be down where they're supposed to go, not up by the optical drives, for optimal cooling with the stock fan configuration.

Ergo, I have to conclude that the most foolproof solution is to rigidly attach a significant amount of mass to the drive, which will allow it to seek normally and still dampen transmitted vibrations. This also has the benefits of being easily done in the cheap Gigabyte case instead of the expensive Lian-Li. If I still need more quiet (unlikely, as I don't have a room with ambient noise that low), I could possibly suspend the hard drive + added mass assembly as a single unit. The only downside I see is having a few kilos of lead in my computer, which doesn't bother me as I don't expect to move it often . . .

Get cheaper RAM. Compatibility lists are always out of date. A-Data, G.SKill. Crucial, Corsair (most of the first page of 2x2GB DDR3)--all good stuff.

What RAM would possibly not be compatible with my MB? I see this OCZ RAM, but the extremely cheap price and mediocre reviews make me think it's cheap for a reason. Also, I see it specs 1.65V instead of the (more common?) 1.5V.

The next step up is something like this. Not explicitly compatible, but it runs at the lower voltage and is still cheap.

[Axman]

Engineers at Western Digital, Seagate, and my own tests tell me that suspended hard drives suffer. I was working on an article on this when the suspended hard drives all died, at roughly the same interval. The best performance was to hard-mount the drives to a chunk of marble, which for all intensive porpoises, was immobile. There wasn't a discernible difference between steel drive cages and vibration-dampened cages. Again, this would have been an article if not for the sweeping death of hard drives.

And drive temperature isn't relative to performance or lifespan; if anything, low temperatures have been linked to failure; I suspect this is due to static from increased fan activity.

[cerbie]

Drives: 2.5" is the safest w/o going SSD. WD and Seagate's 5400RPM ones are exceptionally quiet w/o any help. Mount them to something that decouples a bit (like a 3.5" grommet-mount cage/bay/rail), and you're completely done. But, you lose space, and peak transfer rate. TANSTAAFL.

RAM compatibility has tended to be a problem with big vendor boxes, where they have RAM settings in the BIOS that you can't change, and that must match the RAM you install (maybe it checks the SPD?), just to make it harder for normal users to get cheap aftermarket RAM v. configuring it w/ more expensive RAM (Dell used to do that all the time).

However, I'd be a bit concerned about a large amount of low ratings, too.

I have no complaints about A-Data. I have been using their sticks for a few years, as they would tend to be the cheapest at the time with good reviews. However, at this instant, the Crucial 2x2GB has free shipping at otherwise the same price.

[Endless Mike]

Man, computer building is the worst real-life min/maxing I've ever seen.

[Axman]

Especially when the only way to tell the difference between a $1000 and a $2000 machine is to a) play videogames or b) open Firefox with a saved session of more than thirty tabs.

[GeorgeH]

What RAM would possibly not be compatible with my MB? I see this OCZ RAM, but the extremely cheap price and mediocre reviews make me think it's cheap for a reason. Also, I see it specs 1.65V instead of the (more common?) 1.5V.

The cheap price is good. The increased voltage over the JEDEC standard is the voltage OCZ says is required to get the advertised speed/timings. Think of it as "Factory OC'd" RAM, with the voltage required to get the OC built in. If you wanted you could set the voltage back to 1.5V, but after doing so you'd probably need to run it as DDR3-1333 and/or with looser timings*. So long as your motherboard supports 1.65V on memory (the Gigabyte you're looking at supports up to 2.25V) you'll almost certainly be fine. WRT compatibility, assume that any 240-Pin DDR3-1066 and up modules will work. WRT ratings, you'll notice that Newegg's negative ratings on RAM are almost always the result of DOA sticks, the inability of the user to get the advertised speed, or hardware irrelevant rebate/shipping/tech support problems - none of which I'd consider terribly worrisome in your case.

Bottom line you're getting a lifetime warranty and a very generous return policy (if ordering from Newegg), so of all the possible things to worry about I'd put RAM sticks somewhere between remembering an umbrella and forgetting to turn a light off. Pick a kit that looks pretty (such as this one at $60 AR) and move on with your life.

*This isn't always the case (some modules might simply fail to run at less than 1.65V regardless of speed/timings) but is generally true.

So, hard drives.
If I'm not doing RAID, I need something reasonably fast, reasonably quiet, and reliable. (All of the drives I'm currently looking at are 7200 RPM and half a terabyte.)

The Samsung Spinpoint F3 is supposed to be all that, plus it's cheap. Reviews put it quieter than the WD drives, and I can't tell any difference in reliability from what I've read.

Then WD Caviar Black is the next step up, and it's got a better warranty (though fat lot of good that does me if my data's on there when it goes), though it may be noisier.

Then there's the WD RE3, which is supposed to be an enterprise class drive with higher reliability standards.

Right now, I'm leaning towards the F3, which is cheap and (supposedly) quieter than the others. I didn't see any reliability difference in the reviews, but if somebody knows differently . . . ?

I could also get a 2.5" notebook drive for much lower noise, but I don't think the price and performance hits are going to justify it.

I'm a WD whore, so I'd go for the Caviar Black (and spend $5 more for the 640GB model.) Don't go for the RE3 (or any other "Enterprise" drive) as they're almost always a waste of money unless you're building a big hardware RAID array. The Samsung doesn't look half bad, but I'd buy it for the price, not its acoustics (the noise difference between it and the WD is probably around 1dB, if that.) Don't get a 2.5" drive - it's not even close to worth it.

[2.71828183]

Pick a kit that looks pretty (such as this one at $60 AR) and move on with your life.

RAM is RAM. Got it. Though DOA sticks would be a bad thing--I have a limited amount of time for fiddling (Thanksgiving break) after which I really need the computer working. It wouldn't be the end of the world if it wasn't, but it would make my life much more difficult, and could end up running out my RMA time if I have to go back to school before it's done. (I don't trust the campus mail system with expensive computer parts, as they've lost/misplaced/delayed my mail before, and the mailboxes we get aren't particularly secure anyhow. Therefore, I have to ship all the parts to my house, and I can only put them together when I'm not at school.)

After reading more drive reviews, the Samsung is equal to or better than the Caviar Black in terms of performance, and they're both scored highly on reliability (though there's not data telling me which one is *more* reliable--probably not enough time on market for real data to be gathered anyway). The price is the deciding factor: I'll go with the cheaper Samsung.

So, that cuts my total cost down to ~$548. I'm well within budget, which is a very good thing. I intend to order the parts this weekend, to give everything plenty of time to arrive, and hopefully everything comes together smoothly.

[Nightshade]

Engineers at Western Digital, Seagate, and my own tests tell me that suspended hard drives suffer. I was working on an article on this when the suspended hard drives all died, at roughly the same interval. The best performance was to hard-mount the drives to a chunk of marble, which for all intensive porpoises, was immobile. There wasn't a discernible difference between steel drive cages and vibration-dampened cages. Again, this would have been an article if not for the sweeping death of hard drives.

And drive temperature isn't relative to performance or lifespan; if anything, low temperatures have been linked to failure; I suspect this is due to static from increased fan activity.

Fascinating...

Re: rubber grommets, if I were to put a rubber cushion (say, a small o-ring) around each screw between the mother board and the case... would that dampen some of the overall vibration not related to HDD? Or would that cause the screws to eventually back out and come loose?

[Pinky's Brain]

I doubt putting 2 o-rings (one above and one below, a single one is not enough) on every screw would help much ... I don't think coupled vibration is the main source of fan noise. Anyway, with good CPU/GPU coolers you can use extremely low RPM fans ... easier to just have no audible vibration to dampen to begin with, coupled or otherwise.

With high RPM fans (1000+) even if you can get rid of vibration the woosh alone is very much audible.

[Axman]

It's becoming more common to pass screws through a rubber ring, like a gasket to inhibit metal-on-metal contact. If you can figure out a way to do that you'll see a decrease in noise. There are lots of good ways to soft-mount hard drives and they compromise: a little vibration without added risk, like using double-sided foam tape (or hook-and-loop tape) and just sticking the drive to the bottom of the case. Not mod-friendly, but secure and quiet.

My first benchmarking "case" was a 3'x3' plank of HDF spray-painted black, with the motheboard tray, buttons, and USB headers cut from an enclosure, all screwed to the wall. Highly accessible and all the parts were just velcroed to it, including hard drives and fans.

[Nightshade]

I will definitely look into attachment options.

Right now my entire PC is laid out on a flat surface, whirring away. The only thing that makes steady noise is the graphics card fan. HDD noise doesn't bother me so much - in fact, I'd rather hear it when it does something.

Very soon, I'm going to take my old ATX case outside and set the dust bunnies free with a compressor, then bring it back in and assemble my new machine into it. I plan to tape cut-to-fit air filter pieces over all inlet holes. Dust bunnies inside PC cases do not have to be.

Before I put the outer panels back on the box, I'm going to spray them with black semi-gloss paint. It is currently almond (I think) or gray. Plastic panel parts are slowly changing color. Hard to tell anymore.

New, heavy-duty felt bumpers on the underside of the case should be a nice touch.