Home Built Core i7- Reviews

jeffreaux2 · March 24, 2010

Last year, I built a new PC and posted firts impressions here:

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=128564

Here I will attempt to evaluate the components now that they have had some run time.

I'll start this off by saying that this was the first PC I have ever built fromn scratch, although I have resurrected/re-built many in the past....so I wasn't leary about getting my hands dirty on this. In fact, the onlt qualm I had was the fact that I would have no "customer support" or warranty (sort of). IN truth though, we rarely use customer support, and by the time we do need it....it has expired....right? So that was a no brainer. As far as the warranty goes...ALL of the components carry their own warrantys from their repective manufacturer...and I knew that if all else failed I could rely on that.

The Machine:

CPU - Intel Core i7 920 DO
CPU Cooler - Prolimatech Megahalem
CPU Cooler Fan - Yate Loon 120mm 2000 RPM 80CFM
Motherboard - ASUS Rampage II Extreme X58
RAM - Corsair "Dominator Series" DDR3- 1600 6 each 2 gig dimms for a total of 12 gigs
Power Supply- Enermax 1050 watts
Primary Hard Drive- Western Digital Velociraptor 300 gig / 10,000RPM hard drive
Secondary Drive - 1 Terrabyte Western Digital Black Edition Caviar 7200 RPM
Case / Tower - Coolermaster ATCS 840 Tower
Disk Drive/ Burner - Samsung 22x DVD Burner

Review:

Follows in reply form below.

jeffreaux2 · March 24, 2010

CPU - Intel Core i7 920 DO
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202

I chose this processor for my build due to it's impressive performance and low (realatively) cost. At build time I paid a bit more than it's current price of around $200. It is the slowest of all the i7 processors, but has the ability to "overclock" to speeds that are even faster than the $1000 Core i7's if it is run with proper cooling. I was lucky at the time to get a DO stepping version. This production run is able to achieve overclocking at lower voltages than the originally released chips. This means that in an overclock condition, the CPU will operate at cooler temperatures. Cooler temp equal longer life.:D

As advertised, the Core i7 is a tru 4 core cpu and with mulithreading enabled it operates as 8 cores.....all simultaneously perking away at their tasks. I have noticed the biggest improvements to be in processing intensive tasks such as encoding video and writing to jpeg from RAW on export in Adobe Lightroom. It is quick and pleasurable work.

No regrets.

jeffreaux2 · March 24, 2010

CPU Cooler and Fan

Prolimatech Megahalem Cooler
http://www.frozencpu.com/products/8807/cpu-pro-01/Prolimatech_Megahalems_Rev_B_Intel_CPU_Heatsink_LGA_77511561366_AM2AM2AM3_Hot_Item.html?tl=g40c14s757

Yate Loon 80 CFM 120mm Fan
http://www.frozencpu.com/products/10455/fan-689/Yate_Loon_120mm_x_25mm_Fan_-_Open_Chassis_D12SH-12.html

The cooler itself is really cool looking!....but it is HEAVY! I was concerned about all that weight hanging from the motherboard, but with the use of the included backing plate it doesn't seem to be a problem. Dgrin's Scott Quier used the same cooler in his build and told me that he had to do some block sanding to true up the bottom of his cooler. Mine was installed to the CPU as it came from the box using a thin coat of thermal paste.

The Yate Loon Fan was a no-go. It was simply too loud. I replaced it with a unit from Artic Cooling that has PWM capabilityso that I could control the RPMs and noise via bios settings. This fan pulls only 37 CFM at 400-1600 RPM. It is much quieter, and used with the aforementioned cooler keeps the temperature of the CPU at the same temps I was seeing with the crazy fast fan from Yate Loon. I keep the CPU overclocked to 3.8 Gigaherts. With speed stepping enabled, it will hit 4 GHz when under a heavy load. Ive had no issues whatsoever with overheating.

No Regrets!...except!!! I did have to locate the fan at the rear of the Cooler rather than the front....to pull air through it rather than push....this was to accomodate the nearest RAM slot. The RAM I used Has it's own heat sincs and the fan wouldnt mount to the front of the CPU Cooler without touching the RAM. Not a deal breaker, but this was my experience.

Artic Cooling AF12025 PWM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186015

jeffreaux2 · March 25, 2010

RAM

6 each 2 gigabyte dimms of Corsair "Dominator Series" DDR# 1600 RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145295

- The Corsair RAM I chose is considered high performance RAM. When used in a "triple channel" configuration it is able to attain the best performance. In this set-up, 3 sticks of RAM are placed in the "triple channel slots. The RAM is sold in a "triple channel" kit, that is 3 dimms that are matched. I purchased 2 each triple channel 6 gig kits for a total of 12 gigs of RAM. I didnt want to skimp here and decided to take advantage of all 6 of the RAM slots on the machine. For first boot, I only used 3 sticks of RAM. I didn't want hardware issues to halt me from installing the OS, so I installed only half the RAM, a single hard drive, and no sound card. After the OS was up and running, and I had updated the BIOS, OS, and drivers for the installed hardware I then added the additional RAM and remaining hardware components. This seemed to be a good approach for a home builder and worked out well.

If you use this much RAM you have to use a 64bit OS. A 32 bit OS will only utilize about 4 gigs of the RAM.

In retrospect, 6 gigs may have been plenty here. I check my performance monitor now and then and have never seen the machine utilize more than 30 or 40% of the available RAM. Many of the apps I use that are RAM intensive (like Adobe Premier Elements) are 32 bit apps and THEY can only utilize 4 gigs of RAM. What I don't know is what the remaining RAM holds in a cached state and how much that helps performance. The extra RAM cant hurt though. All I can say is that many apps are open and drawn up on the screen BEFORE pressure is fully released from the mouse click that is used to open it.

In order to utilize the 1600 MHz speed this RAM is rated for I had to "overclock" the RAM above the defaults in the BIOS. This sounds complicated, but I found the instructions to do this on a Corsair forum. It's really simple, and if you build your own PC you will absolutely HAVE to do at least some minimal digging around in the BIOS. Your motherboard manufacturer should supply an in depth instructional to point out where and how to access and control your hardware through the BIOS. ASUS is very thorough in this regard.

No Regrets.

jeffreaux2 · March 25, 2010

Motherboard

ASUS Rampage II Extreme
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131352

As with other components I used, I based my decision here on reviews and performance reports that I found on the net and in magazines such as Maximum PC. Tom's Hardware is an excellent online resource for online research...among others.

In any event, as I had a previous "boutique" performance PC that utilized an ASUS motherboard I was particularly interested in finding an ASUS board to meet my needs. With the board I bought, I REALLY went a tad overboard. This board is an "enthusiast" motherboard and is very high -end for my purposes. I could have saved some cash here and bought a more main stream board from ASUS, but decided to go ahead with this purchase based on one thing. Since it is an enthusiasts board there is a plethora of "guides" and "how-to's" on the net for processor/cpu overclocking with this motherboard. Since I am not a PC enthusiast myself, but wanted to get the most from my Core i7 processor, I chose this board for the help on overclocking that is available. Honestly though, the best help was found on ASUS's own forum via their website.

The bells and whistles....
It has neat features like a lighted I/O panel to assist in plugging/unplugging devices on the back of the case. 6 DIMM slots for triple channel RAM configurations. Ability to hold 2 copies of the BIOS settings ( like one set at base settings and another for overclocking) voltage ports and a reset button on the bottom of the motherboard, plenty USB 2.0 and Firewire connections. 6 SATA ports,
Creative Labs sound card, and slots for up to three video/graphics cards.

It's truely a top shelf component. It booted on the first try. BIOS updates are simple to execute.

No Regrets!

jeffreaux2 · March 25, 2010

Power Supply Unit (PSU)

Enermax "Revolution" 1050watt

This, in my opinion, was the smartest purchase of all.

The cableing alone made the extra expense over similarly powerful PSU's worthwhile. Each set of cables is wrapped in its own sheath to keep the cable mess minimal. This aides in allowing air to flow through the case a little better and yields lower in case temperatures. It is also modular in design, which means you only install the cables you need. This is a much smarter design than simply running a huge bundle of wires out of a PSU....some of which will never be used and will only take up space in the case and collect dust.

In addition, the PSU fan uses thermal management...that is...the fan only spools up to high speed if it is hot. Ive never heard the fan on it. It is VERY quiet.

So, did I need 1050 watts of supply power. Probably not, but for future upgrades I had toyed with the idea of adding a second video card in a "crossfire" configuration for a total of 4 graphics processors. In this configuration I may have needed that much power. Also, when overclocking, a good clean supply of voltage/power is needed to insure stability. The very last thing I wanted was system instability...especially due to voltage drps caused by an iffy PSU.

No REgrets...and HIGHLY recommended.

jeffreaux2 · March 25, 2010

Hard Drives

Western Digital "Velociraptor" 10,000RPM 300 gigabyte - For OS and apps
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136322

Western Digital Caviar "Black Edition" 1 terrabyte 7200 RPM- for storage.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284

My previous "boutique" pc was built by ABS PC and utilized two Western Digital drives in a RAID 0 array. When used this way, the system sees the two drives (in this case 160 gigs each) as one continuos drive (320gig C drive). A RAID 0 array is noteworthy due to it's performance increase over a single drive. In theory it should double the in and out write speeds of the drive as it basically throws data at the drives and it is written to whichever one can chew it up first. Many enthusiasts use this configuration, but there is one flaw. IF either of the drives fails then ALL of the DATA on both drives is useless. This always scared me a little, and so I decided to go another route.

The Velociraptor by WD is rated to run up to 10,000 RPM's. It is one of the fastest non-Solid State drives available and is even faster than many of the SSD's that are currently available. That fact in addition to the fact that it is of a later, faster iteration of SATA technology than what I was using before makes it faster than my old RAID 0 array. It is more expensive than a slower drive, but is much much cheaper than the Solid State Drives on the market. I truely wanted to use a SSD for this purpose, but IMO they are too cost prohibitive at this time.

I added the additional 1 TB drive for storage. They work well with the other hardware and I have had no problems associated with either drive.

I do plan to add another, third, drive to my system. I bought the Windows 7 64 bit Pro upgrade last October but have not had time to install it. My plan is to add a second Velociraptor and install Win7 and my other programs on it. After that, I will use the original velociraptor as a scratch disk. This should help with performance some....and mostly when video editing....but there is a chance it will help with Photoshop as well, but since I have so much RAM I doubt I will see a difference there.

No Regrets.

jeffreaux2 · March 25, 2010

CD/DVD burner

SAmsung 22x DVD=-R DVD Burner
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151173

This part also had excellent reviews based on its performance. It uses a SATA connection so cables are small and not taking up a great deal of space inside the case. It works fine and is much, much quieter than the Lite-On CD burner in my old PC. It does spool up when it is chewing on things, but compared to what I used to use it is VERY quiet. It also has "light scribe" capability.

It does not have the ability to burn a Blu-Ray disk....or read one. I am still waiting for this technology to become more affordable.

No Regrets.

Cuong · March 25, 2010

Excellent review. Very detailed and thorough.

Cuong

jeffreaux2 · March 25, 2010

Video/ Graphics Card

Sapphire Radeon HD4870 X2
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102768

Okay I REALLY splurged here!!!

This single graphics card has dual processors (GPU's) onboard. It was THE fastest available it the time of the build and can be used in dual or triple card set-ups in cross-fire mode....even though it operates in crossfire on it's own (using both GPU's) when using 3D applications. It's a beast.

For editing via Photoshop or Lightroom this part doesn'y really have THAT much of an effect on performance....and due to a card that was delivered with faults I am convinced of this. PS CS4 does utilize the graphics processor to some degree, but I am convinced that a main stream graphics card at $150 - $250 would be more than ample horsepower in this regard.

As mentioned mine arrived faulty. As a first time builder it took me a little time to figure this out...especially since I primarily use 2D apps as opposed to 3D apps. The originally shipped board worked flawlessly with Photoshop or Lightroom but failed to funtion at all when a 3D app was initiated. Apps such as the Virtual Mark benchmark or PC based games like HAWKX (flight simulater) brought the entire system to a halt and in need of a reboot. After plenty headscratching, re-installs, and driver updates I discovered that when in 2D mode only one of the two processors is "live". The second one is used only for 3D applications. I had a board with a faulty 3D graphics processor. I did an RMA with newegg, which was painless, and the second board has worked flawlessly since it's install.

This is the loudest (or could be) component inside the chasis. At full bore, the sound of the fan in obnoxious. I have mine spooled down to 40% of it's max RPMs. I can still here it, but it isn't annoying. I did some monitoring under heavy load to watch for elevated temperatures and found that 40% is a good quiet safe place to keep it parked.

It has HDMI out as well as DVI and analog solutions and is "ready" to tackle Hi-Def viewing via Blu-Ray when that becomes more mainstream for PC's.

No Regrets, but I could have gotten by with much less and saved big money. This card is no longer available new. Graphics cards are one of the most frequently updated pieces of PC hardware out there. Whats big and fast today will be cluncky and slow by a new standard next month. I do highly recomment ATi products though. Ive used them for nearly 10 years and have always had good service.

Now how do I know I could have gotten by much cheaper?

While my original defective graphix card was being RMA'd to Newegg I borrowed an old...very old...ATI X300 pcie card from a friend. This is ancient technology really, first generation PCIE graphics card. However, I notice no discernable performance issues in PS or LR with the borrowed card...and this is really a bottom of the barrel card that has passive cooling. The X300 was NOT capable, however, or compatible with todays 3D rendering for modern PC games or benchmarks.

jeffreaux2 · March 25, 2010

Case-

Coolermaster ATCS 840 Tower
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119187

This case is beautiful. It is all aluminum and has features such as tool less mounting for all of the drive bays that make it a pleasure to use. The motherboard mounts to a slide out (on bearings) tray to make parts changes a breeze. All of the air intakes feature filters to keep the innards clear of dust. It looks elegant...unlike most of the enthusiast or "gamer" cases available it is very adult in design. It is rather large though and that migh be a problem for some potential users. Personally, I like having all that extra space inside when I do need to work in there.

For cooling it features 3 intake fans that are 230mm in diameter. That ius like 7 or 8 inches in diameter folks. HUGE fans! Two of these are located on the top of the case to draft warm air up and out of the case. The third is located in the front and behind a cover to pull cool air in and over the hard drive bays. The beauty of the large fans is that they spin at a realative low RPM making the case super quiet. Ther is a fourth fan located at the back panel near the I/O panel. This is directly in line with the fan on the CPU cooler inside and helps to grab the hot air from the CPU and pull it out the back of the case. The PSU in this case mounts at the bottom. There is a filtered intake there that is in place to filter the air thet the PSU pulls in from outside the case....and provisions to exhaust out the back. No more pre heated air going into the PSU with this case. There is ample room inside and provisions also to add raiators and pumps/reservoirs if liquid cooling is your thing. For me.....Im good on air.

It's roomy, elegant, quiet, and keeps things cool. One of the best cases on the market.

One Con. The Power and Activity lights on top of the case are a high intensity blue that is bright enough to put a pool of blue light on the cieling. I could do without those altogether.

No regrets and highly recommended.

jeffreaux2 · March 25, 2010

A few images I took along the way...

Parts delivery

Tool Less Hard drive tray.

The case...stripped to the bones for the build...

A Core i7 in it's home.

CPU Cooler mounted, Enermax "Revolution" PSU mounted at bottom of chasis behind it.

Samsung DVD Burner

PSU....and a good shot of the modular connectors.

CPU Cooler...you can see the cooling fins also from the RAM modules in this shot....6 each....to the right.

Innards....Radeon Graphics card above the PSU.

More Innards...

Screenshot of performance monitor during lightroom export. Note the 8 processing streams....

jeffreaux2 · March 25, 2010

In summary, I am very satisfied and wonder often why I waited so long. I HIGHLY recommend the Core i7 platform for video or photo editing. I guess I could have skimped here and there and built it for a much lower coest, but you must understand that I was VERY frustrated with Lightrooms performance in particular when I set out to build this. I had also cut my teeth on PS with a 4 mega-pixel camera. That made me used to being able to open ALL of the files on a memory card simultaneously in PS and work/edit through the stack. This machine can work in that way through a stack of files from my 50D...at 15 mega-pixels...something that would utterly CRUSH my old pc regardless of how much RAM I threw at it.

It is a pleasure to use, especially when heavy lifting is required. I havent done a whole lot of video editing on it, but have done enough to prove a workflow with some short duration slideshows that I created in Adobe Premier Elements in full HD....to show off images to clients via smugmug. It handled the editing, rendering, and encoding tasks smoothly and quickly. Very quickly.

All of this is under a Windows Vista 64 bit environment. I have had no ill issues or conflicts with any of my hardware and am left to wonder about all the Vista drama....and I keep all the bells and whistles in Vista "ON". I do, though, intend to get to that Windows 7 Pro upgrade as soon as is feasable.

To those of you who have considered building a PC but are afraid you don't know enough about a PC to do it....well....phooey! There's nothing to it!!!

...and you can build a machine with top shelf components that will out perform an off the shelf PC...and provide for some forward thinking upgrades later on.

Do It!!!:D

Scott_Quier · March 25, 2010

Jeff has asked me to chime in here with some observations about my build. So...

First thing ... let me say that I didn't put nearly the $$ into this build that Jeff did. Cash outlay for new parts was something in the neighborhood of about $700. But, that's because I already had the disk, the case, the DVD drive and some other things.

What I bought was:

The MBO, CPU, and cooler
Here's a picture of the cooler after a test installation on the CPU. As you can see, the amount of contact was not what it should be. So, as Jeff mentioned above, I got out the wet/dry, a sheet of plate glass, and some water and sanded this thing flat and smooth. As I progressed, I tested the flatness of the interface with a straight razor and when it looked good I re-mounted it on the CPU, unmounted it, and took a look at the grease patter. Life was good.
The memory Here you see only 6GB. I later added another 6GB for a total of 12GB. And, I have seen the memory consumption level exceed 50% thanks to Win7 and SuperFetch (SuperFetch is a really cool idea I had and that they asked to use - I should be in one of the Win7 commercials ) The cooler is actually positioned horizontally in the case so one could/would assume the lever moment about the mounting point to be a bit more than optimal. However, with the mounting hardware that actually is mounted to the solder side of the board and understanding that the MBO is actually seems to be designed to handle a larger cooling solution - life is good. In my case, this cooling solution is actually about 1.5" from the door of the case - lots of room! Not seen here is a 180mm fan mounted on the cooling fins just over the memory and it pushes the air through the fins to the case exhaust fan and, from there, out the back of the case.
As you can see from this shot, the video card is nothing special - my son bought a pair of them for a build about 3 years ago. He gave them to me. In addition, you can see that the system disk is a 200GB (spinning at 7,200RPM IIRC) and a 500GB (also at 7,200RPM) - both are SATA. Oh, and Jeff is soooo wrong about ATI video cards. Nvidia is soooo much better.
Running Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium. There's not a lot of difference between Home Premium and Win7 Professional and there's nothing in Win7 Pro that I need. So, I saved some major bucks that way.

Conclusion: I am very happy with this build. It's been flawless since day one (aside from a DOA MBO which I RMAed back to NewEgg with no problems). Working with the 25MB RAW files that come out of my 5DII is a dream compared to the computer I was using (which was almost as old and slow as the one Jeff was trying to use). And, working with the RAW files from my IR 20D is like greased lightening! Way Cool!

jeffreaux2 · March 25, 2010

Scott_Quier wrote:

Oh, and Jeff is soooo wrong about ATI video cards. Nvidia is soooo much better.

Im not biting !!!

Ford vs Chevy
PC vs Mac
Nikon vs Canon
Ati vs nVidia

These battles will rage forever.:D

Eclipsed · March 26, 2010

Building a PC is a great experience. I recently built an Core i5 Desktop and it is great.

Great review

jeffreaux2 · March 27, 2010

Eclipsed wrote:

Building a PC is a great experience. I recently built an Core i5 Desktop and it is great.

Great review

You are right. There's a great degree of satisfaction once all the parts are together and you press that button...and....waa laah....it boots!

Eclipsed · March 27, 2010

Well, mine didn't boot right away because I refused to read the instructions thoroughly. Another lesson learned as I ended up putting the RAM in the wrong slots.

Dan7312 · March 27, 2010

I dunno, I think that in the end you will be glad you got 12G. I find video and image process seem to vacuum up ram, along with some of the other things I do. Here is a snapshot of my i7 (940) with 12G running a batch of raw converts through Canon Digital Photo Pro.

jeffreaux2 wrote:

RAM
In retrospect, 6 gigs may have been plenty here..

dogwood · March 28, 2010

Dan7312 wrote:

I dunno, I think that in the end you will be glad you got 12G. I find video and image process seem to vacuum up ram, along with some of the other things I do. Here is a snapshot of my i7 (940) with 12G running a batch of raw converts through Canon Digital Photo Pro.

Agree with Dan. I'm running 8 GB on quad-core and still run into my share of delays processing 5DMKII files.

But it sounds like a pretty sweet machine, Jeff. I don't care what Mac enthusiasts say, it's still a lot more fun (and satisfying) to build your own!

The "crazy" thing about a DIY system is that if something goes wrong with the hardware, you can generally open the computer and diagnose the problem yourself without sending it back to a manufacturer. Or if you simply want to upgrade the motherboard or power supply or whatever-- you can do that easily without paying someone else to do it.

gecko0 · March 28, 2010

dogwood wrote:

Agree with Dan. I'm running 8 GB on quad-core and still run into my share of delays processing 5DMKII files.

But it sounds like a pretty sweet machine, Jeff. I don't care what Mac enthusiasts say, it's still a lot more fun (and satisfying) to build your own! The "crazy" thing about a DIY system is that if something goes wrong with the hardware, you can generally open the computer and diagnose the problem yourself without sending it back to a manufacturer. Or if you simply want to upgrade the motherboard or power supply or whatever-- you can do that easily without paying someone else to do it.

...but the Geek Squad would be happy to visit your home and charge you $250 to diagnose a bad stick of RAM.

jeffreaux2 · March 28, 2010

dogwood wrote:

Agree with Dan. I'm running 8 GB on quad-core and still run into my share of delays processing 5DMKII files.

But it sounds like a pretty sweet machine, Jeff. I don't care what Mac enthusiasts say, it's still a lot more fun (and satisfying) to build your own! The "crazy" thing about a DIY system is that if something goes wrong with the hardware, you can generally open the computer and diagnose the problem yourself without sending it back to a manufacturer. Or if you simply want to upgrade the motherboard or power supply or whatever-- you can do that easily without paying someone else to do it.

You are absolutely right.

Everything....or anything is upgradeable.

I may be locked in with the processor and motherboard though.....at least for now. There is a rumoured intel Socket 1366 CPU that will be released soon that hums along with 12 processing streams rather than the 8 of my current CPU. While it sounds awesome at first, the "real world" test results that are out at this time point to little or no gain from the extra streams. It seems that 8 is a sweet spot for todays desktop applications....as they are unable to take advantage of the additional streaming.

and then there is cost....

When upgrading a CPU...USUALLY...you will be switching to a different socket. THAT will REQUIRE you to also purchase a new motherboard to mount that new CPU. Along with those two hardware items, it is likely that your old RAM will not be ideal or compatable with the CPU or motherboard. In this scenario...the need to upgrade a CPU has cost you a new motherboard and RAM as well.

This perfectly describes Scott Quier's build. He was able to use his old case, disk drives, and PSU, but did a complete face lift to a very high end PC. By using the components that he already had he was able to save a LOT of cash over my "from scratch" build.

Home Built Core i7- Reviews

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