5x wow box spec (current: $1,639 +s/h+tax)

[keyclone]

i was thinking about putting together a real cranked out system. something that would get 65fps in each wow no matter where i am in the game.

this thought was centered around multiple drives. 1 per wow. this would allow each wow to have it's own read head, therefore improving the throughput. as such, i found a 60G 7200 8MB SATA for only $32 (!!!). they aren't great drives... but they should hold up.

i would also put another drive for the OS. something fast with enough space. i found a 400G 7200 16MB SATA drive for only $84.

next was the dual graphics boards that would run 3 screen. one for my main and 2 for either side. i was going for 2 8800GT boards with 512M each. this would have 3 wows on one board and 2 on the other.

then i'd have 4G of system memory, corsair for quality. $134 each stick (2 sticks)

i figured a 750W power supply should be able to drive the cards.. any info on this is most welcome.

now i'd need to identify a quality CPU and MOBO. i was thinking a quad core would be nice... but has anyone seen a dual quad core, yielding 4x2 == 8 cores total? which MOBO would be the one to go with?

after that, it's just COOLING and CASE... pretty straight forward.

any thoughts or input are most welcome. i will adjust the components in the OP as people chime in.

current:
---
5x SATA drives (60G 7200 8MB) - one per clone $ 32 x 5
1x SATA drive (400G 7200 16MB) - system drive $ 84
2x dual 8800gt 512 $224 x 2
3x ACER 22" LCD $250 x 2
2x 2G corsair TWIN2x4096-6400C4DHX memory $134 x 2
1x Corsair CMPSU-750TX power supply $179
CPU
MOBO
CASE
COOLING
--
subtotal 1,639.00
shipping 0.00
total 1,639.00
--
*numbers from pricewatch.com

[Chorizotarian]

Are you sure that it really helps to have each clone on a separate drive? I've been running them all out of the same directory via Vista symbolic links, and I hardly see any big disk activity in perfmon except when changing zones. The major predictor of bad perfomence for me seems to be network activity, not disk.

[logynation]

There are definitely 8 core PCs in my computer lap at college, by the way.
But, why exactly are you willing to spend so much money to get 65 fps on all 5 displays?

[Peril]

there are cheap dual CPU quad core lga775 boards and CPU's out there

the best board for that is about $500+ and is built by Tyan

Sidenote: If you are looking for drive access speeds, there are several solutions, the cheapest being 3.0 gb/s SATA drives (11ms access), and the flat out fastest being SATA II Flash Drives are pricey, but clock out at 500x the access speeds of conventional hard drives. SATA (standard) 8gb flash drives run about $250 and boast 0.1ms access times; it would allow you to buy only 1 for 5x wow and have no problems. Just throwing that out there. (Press release shows a 1.6 TB Solid Sate HDD planed for release 2nd quarter)

If you can run IDE the Prices drop drastically... but a review of SSD's by Club Overclocker said:

"While most hard drives tend to drop off towards the end of the read cycle, the OCZ SSD maintained very close to 55 MB/s throughout the entire benchmark. Without the handicap of moving parts, the OCZ SSD was able to respond in a mere 96 milliseconds. Just to put that into perspective for you, it takes about 300-400 milliseconds to blink your eyes. Here is spectacular highlight of the OCZ solid state drive capabilities. The two operations simulated in the benchmark rely mostly on a random access pattern so the mechanical latencies of the standard hard drives really cripple their performance. In this aspect, the OCZ SSD is able to finish the operations faster due to the higher sustained transfer rates. The OCZ SSD pretty much lays the smack down on conventional hard drives in Application loading and Gaming tests.OCZ currently has the most competitively priced Solid State Drive in its size class, on the market."

Another thing to point out with the use of these (and the reason to justify spending the extra money) the lowest posted life span i've seen on them is 1,000,000 hours (~114 years). As long as the SATA standard lasts you will have at the very minimum an excessively fast boot drive or a game drive.

EDIT: more info

[BobGnarly]

Not sure what kind of comments you are after, so I'm just going to assume nothing. Please don't take offense if this is all trivial info to you.

i was thinking about putting together a real cranked out system. something that would get 65fps in each wow no matter where i am in the game.

this thought was centered around multiple drives. 1 per wow. this would allow each wow to have it's own read head, therefore improving the throughput. as such, i found a 60G 7200 8MB SATA for only $32 (!!!). they aren't great drives... but they should hold up.

i would also put another drive for the OS. something fast with enough space. i found a 400G 7200 16MB SATA drive for only $84.

As previously mentioned, I would carefully consider this decision. It seems intuitive on the surface, but I think it fails to consider certain issues like bus contention and whatnot. I'm also not 100% sure how disk caching is handled in the driver, but you'd potentially lose any such advantage if it did exist.

What I do know is that I'm currently running 5 instances of wow out off one directory in a single (10K raptor sata) drive, and can't tell much difference between the load times of it and a single wow instance. I'm not sure how disk bound this scenario is, but when loading 5 wows during a zone, there's got to be a fair amount of retrieval happening.

next was the dual graphics boards that would run 3 screen. one for my main and 2 for either side. i was going for 2 8800GT boards with 512M each. this would have 3 wows on one board and 2 on the other.

Not sure if you're aware of this issue, or what OS you're planning on, but XP currently has performance issues with multiple heads unless they are in "span" mode. Just a heads up so you can be informed on this issue before you buy. Lot's of posts in these forums RE: this issue.

then i'd have 4G of system memory, corsair for quality. $134 each stick (2 sticks)

Not bashing on Corsair at all, I like them too, but I also like G.Skill. Had a lot of personal success with them, they are very highly regarded, and this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231122

is a great deal.

i figured a 750W power supply should be able to drive the cards.. any info on this is most welcome.

750 should do it. I can't stress enough to get a quality PS though. There are quite a few good choices out there. If you don't have a personal preference, some names I've had some success with (by no means comprehensive): Thermaltake, Antek, Coolermaster, OCZ. Good rule of thumb is that you need to spend money here. If it's cheap, there's probably a reason, and you don't want to find out that reason when your computer starts acting flaky. PS problems are, IMO, the hardest PC problems to diagnose.

after that, it's just COOLING and CASE... pretty straight forward.

I HATE system noise and overheating, so personally I spend a little on a good case. The good news is, it's not too hard to find a good case these days. Things I look for:

- 120 fans ONLY (very important for low noise).
- at least one fan blowing over the hard drives. I run 10K drives, and as I'm sure you know, heat is the enemy of any mechanical/electrical device.
- Well thought heat egress from case. all fans blowing in is bad. all egress via PS is bad, particularly if there is an ingress close to PS. Try to find a case that make solid intuitive sense re: how the air will flow throw the case (like the force! )
- A good door! Poorly fitting doors piss me off.

Anyway, just a few points for thought. Hope it helps.

[Kissell13]

I have a Thermaltake Armor case and love it. Just my 2c

[Hokusai]

I too have my doubts as to multiple drives (6 as far as I can tell in your spec) will work effectively, but they will generate noise (some) and heat (a lot) which in turn generates more noise. I don't like too much noise from a computer these days, must be getting old(er).

Some more thoughts:

RAM: do you need extra fast extra hot ram? How about 8Gb of slightly slower speed, slightly cooler good quality RAM instead?

Case: A BIG case for airflow and cooling, if you are running multiple drives, hot RAM and a qaud cpu you WILL need it.

Fans: 120mm fans, preferably low noise ones, maybe you will get some with a decent case, I use a self modded (for less noise, better cooling) Antec 182 (I think :P), but I am not entirely satisifed with it, I feel I need a bigger case with the stuff I have in it (3 HDD, 4GB RAM, quad cpu and 8800 GTS vid card).

HDD: I would rather go for a bigger HDD as they have higher data density, which tanslates to high read/write speed a lot of the time, I would say 1 drive for OS/random stuff and a seperate drive for WoW/other stuff, a couple of 500 GBs would work fine I am presuming, if not larger :P This means you don't run out of SATA headers on your Mobo too, a lot don't like having more than 4 used for HDD, or at least that was my experience recently with one Mobo.

CPU: The old staple of Intel Q6600, or perhaps the newer fabbed one? This: Q9450 then leave alone or overclock.

Motherboard: I use a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P in my machine and I like it, was good for overclocking, and seems stable and well made, kinda went off Asus after they kept breaking. There are newer chipsets out there though, and after having had trouble with Nvidia chipset motherboards I decided to use Intel now, and why not, I am using an Intel CPU after all... X-48 is the current top performance chipset from Intel atm isn't it?

CPU Cooling: How are you cooling? If it's Air cooling, I use a thermalright something... Xp-120 maybe? decent cooler, but there are others out there that are also good, whatever is the best cooler for your money basically. Quad core CPUs tend to not be cooled equally across the cores, you may get a temperature differential across them of 10 C or so, at least mine is like that and I couldn't be bothered to reseat my cooler for the nth time in the end.

PSU: a GOOD one. I like Enermax, but they are pricey, even by premium standards. The other makes mentioned so far are also good, try and get one with modular cables, will make your machine less cluttered and easier to put together (he says). Had a PSU blow up on me and took out all my PC components too, in the middle of raiding in EQ on top of it... I will only use a good brand one from now on.

Graphics card: How about the ATI 4850? My only concerns are the limited cooling it has.

That's about all I can think of for now, sorry for Wall.

[Noxxy]

Hi KC,

Just some linkies for you which may help.

Some 'suggested' system builds
'Dream machine'
'Gaming Machine'

From looking at the dream machines, I note that they tend to cap out at 750W similar to what you are suggesting but I don't see any dual GCards. If you are concerned, I go to this linky all the time as it has a great power supply calculator.

Ram - I did notice that you are only going for 4g of ram? Not going with a 64bit Vista/XP OS? In regards to corsair ram, I have a matched set in my main box (don't ask the price...) - never had a problem and I can really squeeze it when overclocking - a point to note as well, if you have problems with your ram or have any questions, the corsair website is a great place to post and all queries are answered very quickly (go there on the odd occasion to see just how far I can OC)

PS - Also I noted you are going the corsair PS - I personally don't know the 750TX but I have used many 520HX/620HX and I cannot speak more highly of them - seriously, the corsair PS's are fantastic in both presentation (boxing / wires / parts) and in performance - very smooth (no, I don't work for corsair but I am a fanboi!)

Case - tbth, do a stack of research, your going to be putting a huge wad of cash into your box so the longer it lasts the better - the dream machine linky has some suggestions which you can click on to get details

Cooling - same as the dream machine, heard some great reports re the Thermaltake BigTyp 120 - just make sure you can fit the sucker in the case!

CPU - Dual core quad cores...and here respectfully, I think it is too early to bother trying to aim for a dual quad yet - it's still all very new stuff and I am positive the price will be unrealistic...

HDD - I honestly can't comment on the usefulness of so many HHDs...

[Old Dirty Bathtub]

750 should do it. I can't stress enough to get a quality PS though. There are quite a few good choices out there. If you don't have a personal preference, some names I've had some success with (by no means comprehensive): Thermaltake, Antek, Coolermaster, OCZ. Good rule of thumb is that you need to spend money here. If it's cheap, there's probably a reason, and you don't want to find out that reason when your computer starts acting flaky. PS problems are, IMO, the hardest PC problems to diagnose.

Ditto on this; power supplies are a tempting place to be frugal, but it is really no fun at all when they blow up.

I think I've made this recommendation here before, but I'm not hesitant to risk sounding like a fanboy and make it again. I strongly recommend going with PC Power & Cooling for the PS; their supplies are universally well reviewed for reliability and solid construction.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/451/1/
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/553
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=437&type=expert

Newegg has outrageously good prices on these supplies; the 750 watt PCP&C supply is actually comparable to a lot of the far less well-reviewed supplies. I'm in the middle of replacing a dodgy power supply in my gaming machine with one of these right now. (Corsair may make a perfectly acceptable supply as well; I really don't have any experience with their PSs.)

The Thermaltake Armor/Kandalf series cases have lots of bays and can be purchased with a 25cm case fan in the side panel; this monster moves a lot of air without making a lot of noise. The Coolermaster Stacker is also a good choice; it has a ton of 5.25" bays and can be equipped with 120mm fans to cool the installed hard drives and a cross-flow fan that looks pretty effective. Both of these case series include a number of (increasingly expensive) configuration options, but the entry-level cases of both series are available for around $150 at Newegg.