Very specific lightweight build

[punk0x29a]

Hi there!

 

It's my first post on the forums, so first I'd like to say "Hi!" to everyone.

 

I'm planning onto build myself a new PC and I'm stuck at various parameters, so I figured that I'd ask for help here, as those forums are famous for vast HW knowledge.

 

I've seen  topics quite similar to this one, but none of them fit my needs perfectly, therefore I've decided to start a new one. 

 

Thing is: I want to build the machine optimal for my very specific needs, and I don't want to blow the budget while doing this. And what are my needs? Well...

 

- I'm first and foremost a programmer, therefore I can get by with a pocket calculator with most of the things I'm doing...

- Sometimes I also like to do a little graphics/video/audio editing. Nothing proffesional, but rendering a video a little bit faster would be a nice feature, as well as dedicated audio card with stuff like separate headphones output (amateur dj).

- And I'm very passionate about gaming, especially old-school gaming. I'm very picky about it, too. Practically not interested in most modern AAA titles at all. Plus: I'm using Linux as my only operating system, so I can forget about DirectX12 titles, at least for a while. 

 

Machine characteristics I'm looking for present themselves as follows: 

 

- Machine must be quiet.

 

This is the highest priority requirement. I have heard enough buzzing and whirling in my lifetime, ever since my very first 286. Time to finally change it. I've watched Linus's episode on ultimate quiet PC, as well as did some reading on such profiled builds. Yet I'm still confused by stuff like water cooling, static vs huge fans cooling, as opinions differ from person to person. 

 

- Machine must have long lifespan.

 

I'd like the components to be reliable, because I'm using my PC for work. Stable and failure-free environment is a must. Failing component can really get into my way, big time.

The biggest issue I have is the one with SSDs. For the stuff I'm usually doing, HDD speed is the main bottleneck, and I like my system to be very much responsive.

I dream about RAID-0 on PCI SSDs, but I've heard that those are prone to fail over time. Two raided 250GB SSDs ( or maybe four 128GB SSDs?) would fit my needs just perfectly, but I'm affraid about such system's stability.

I'm also thinking about two mirrored RAID-0s; one did on SSDs, other one on traditional HDDs, that's four 250GB drives (two of which I already have). Would such a setup yield performance drops? 

I'd like to just move my existing operating system and  my data to the new rig. Those take roughly 0.5TB of space and I probably won't expand it in the next few years, if ever. 

 

- Machine must be upgrade-able.

 

I'd like to upgrade GPU and whatnot after two or three years without the need to buy a new motherboard ( and as we all know, such an operation almost always snowballs into new build ) .When it comes to gaming, I've investigated a lot and it seems that two gigs of DDR5 VRAM should be just perfect for me (I believe that Wolfenstein New Order is the most demanding title in my collection). Yet there are many factors to concider: GPU reliability and robustness, noise level, memory bandwidth, many different type of processors on the GPU board and their goals, and so on... I won't lie to you - I find all of those very confusing.

 

All and all, I'd also like to play 2016's DooM once Wine guys will implement Denuvo support in the future. 

 

About the resolution: I just LOVE 4:5 1280x1024 office-type monitors and I don't plan to shift to widescreen anytime soon. I'm not proffesional graphic nor designer too, so Quadro-like pro cards can be ruled out.

 

About RAM: I've never, ever exceeded 7GB of RAM, and usually I'm just a little above 5GB with what I'm doing. Two 4GB chips of fast RAM (DDR4?) in dual-channel like configuration will be just perfect. Or maybe four 2GB chips on quad channel, if such are available? Point is: no more than 8GBs of RAM, configured in the best way possible.

 

- Machine must be upgrade-able, again.

 

Thing about power supply - those confuse a hell out of me. On one hand, I certainly don't need gigaWatts of power,  but what if I upgrade to some futuristic GPU in a few years and it would turn out that I need like those twelve six pin PCI power chords to run it? ( exaggerated, of course, but I hope that you get my drift ). Also, scary stories about mixing lower tier PSUs with high-end components and breaking them...

 

- Machine must be quiet, again.

 

I live in Poland and it's not that easy to get quiet components out here (especially on used HW market). If there are some common components that can be made quiet ( for example by manipulating fan's RPMs ) you may included it, too. But dedicated quiet components are most welcome, including the case, PSU, GPU, and so on...  The more quiet it gets, the better.

 

As for the machine dimensions - not important at all. Can take up whole room if it needs to.

 

- It must be... cheap?

 

I'd be grateful if the budget for a such a build would not exceed $1000. With my needs, however, this should not be a problem... or should it?

 

Thanks in advance for all replies!

 

P.S.

If you'd like to include short description for your recommendations, arguments for why and how, explain to me various details of decisions you'd make in my place or include links to various resources, I'd be just grateful. I want to know as much about my PC as possible.

 

Cheers!   

 

-

 

 

 

 

[GDRRiley]

give me a few min.

[GDRRiley]

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/JJDkXH

So I went over some to get a workstation grade motherboard and CPU along with ECC memory. The GPU is just a fairly good low cost GPU that does well at 1080P. got you a large SSD boot drive and a good PSU

[malon]

tweaked the list gdrriley posted http://pcpartpicker.com/list/FZmF8K

I replaced the cpu 4 core hypertreaded xeon with a xeon 4 core no hypertreading and lower clocked cpu with the same features exept,  and i changed the cooler to somthing a bit cheaper, also i deleted the windows pack since that wont be needed.

I am not going to give advice on soundcards since i never needed one and know to little about them.

The rest of the components on the list are kept unchanged since it is a solid recomendation.

The system could be cheaper if you would be oke with a consumer mobo cpu memory combo. 

[punk0x29a]

Thank you very much for a quick response!

Your setup proposition looks very interesting - especially thanks for cooling recommendations / case / PSU. I'll investigate it further, probably changing RAM for two 4GB chips as mentioned in the post.

Regarding Samsung SSD - folks say it's very reliable. Is there a possibility to get similarly reliable from this series with half of capacity? I'd like to RAID-0 them, after all. As mentioned - I'd even go for 4x128GB + backup HDD. 

 

Thanks again!

[punk0x29a]

Okay... I've been thinking a while, and I've tweaked recommended stuff... Very badly...

Here are two solutions I'm thinking about: 

 

1)  ~~$1152

 

MSI B85-G43 DDR3 LGA1150
Intel Core i7-4790K
HyperX DDR3 2x 4GB 1600 MHz CL10 FURY Red

 

2) ~~$1400

MSI X99A RAIDER s2011-3 X99A DDR4 RAID/USB3.1 A
Intel Core i7-5820K

2X Kingston HyperX FURY DDR4 DIMM 4GB 2666MHz 

 

In both cases:

 

PCI-E GIGABYTE RADEON R9 380X 4GB DDR5 PX 256B
SilentiumPC Vero L1 500W 80+
Carbide 100R Silent Edition Black MID-Tower
AAB COOLING SUPER SILENT P4 PWM Rev.2
SSD Intel 540 Series 240GB 2x

 

And here's the thing:

 

#2 seems to be more like, dunno... Future-proof, with all of the DDR4 thing going on, LGA2011-3 socket and so on...

But do I really need it?

"Boring" #1 scores just great in all the benchmarks I've seen... 

 

Also, recommendations for tweaking various components in those are very welcome.

 

Cheers!