Configuration Advice Requested - And I really will use the feedback!

[Mercurio]

Looking for a 5-boxing system that has good performance (even in Dalaran) and will last a few years.

Using this community's advice, I put together the following system on Cyberpower. BTW, I plan on using a 30" monitor that I have for all 5 clients using a Keyclone maximizer setup.

I'm looking for feedback on anything I'm missing in this system or obvious things you would change to make the system a better investment.

A few specific questions:

Should I be telling them to overclock the processor or videocard?

Is the power supply adequate?

Is Vista Basic good enough?

I'm not planning on adding any must-have data on this computer (using the old one for photos and such), so I don't need a seperate "data drive", right?

The price came out to $1560, but I don't mind spending a bit more if I can get the bang for the buck.

Lastly, is Cyberpower a good company to order the computer from? Are there others that you would recommend I put together a similiar configuration on for comparison?

Thanks so much for taking some time to take a look!

CASE: Apevia X-Supra Gaming Mid-Tower 420W Case (G Type Black Color with Side-Window)
Neon Light Upgrade: NONE
Extra Case Fan Upgrade: Default case fans
POWER SUPPLY Upgrade: STANDARD CASE POWER SUPPLY
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-920 2.66 GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366
COOLING FAN : Intel LGA1366 Certified CPU Fan & Heatsink
MOTHERBOARD: MSI X58 Platinum Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Mainboard Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 SATA RAID w/ eSATA, Dual GbLAN, USB2.0, IEEE1394a, &7.1Audio
MEMORY: 12GB (6x2GB) PC1333 DDR3 PC3 10666 Triple Channel Memory (Corsair or Major Brand)
VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX260 896MB 16X PCI Express (Major Brand Powered by NVIDIA)
VIDEO CARD 2: NONE
VIDEO CARD 3: NONE
LCD Monitor: NONE
2nd Monitor: NONE
HARD DRIVE: Extreme Performance (RAID-0) with 2 Identical Hard Drives (1TB (500GBx2) SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)
Data Hard Drive: NONE
USB PORTABLE DRIVE: NONE
Optical Drive: (Special Price) LG 20X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER (BLACK COLOR)
Optical Drive 2: NONE
SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
SPEAKERS: NONE
NETWORK: ONBOARD 10/100 NETWORK CARD
MODEM: NONE
KEYBOARD: (Keyboard & Mouse Combo) Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 3200 Laser Cordless Keyboard & Mouse Combo
MOUSE: XtremeGear Optical USB 3 Buttons Gaming Mouse
Extra Thermal Display : NONE
Wireless 802.11B/G Network Card: NONE
Flash Media Reader/Writer: None
Cable Wiring: None
Rounded Cable: None
VIDEO CAMERA: NONE
PRINTER: None
PRINTER CABLE: None
IEEE CARD: NONE
USB PORT: Built-in USB 2.0 Ports
FLOPPY: NONE
OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Basic w/ Service Pack 1 (64-bit Edition)
FREEBIES: None
Media Center Remote Control & TV Tuner: None
SERVICE: STANDARD WARRANTY: 3-YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY PLUS LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT
RUSH SERVICE: NO; READY TO SHIP IN 5~10 BUSINESS DAYS

[Kedash00]

VIDEO CARD 2: NONE change this too...
VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX260 896MB 16X PCI Express (This is to make Dalaran run smooth)
420W power supply needs to change to 700w or so

everything else looks good to me

[Yo-Yo Freak]

Data Hard Drive: NONE

change this to an SSD, it can drastically improve performance. download wow onto the SSD and symlink it on the other HDD's. SSD's have extremely good read times, not as good write times though so don't load the OS on the SSD.

~YYF

[Yo-Yo Freak]

oh and weather you go with 1 or 2 video cards you need a bigger PSU. for that system you need a minimum of probably 500w (600w+ is probably better). if you go with 2 GPU's you should have a minimum of probably 700w.

Hope this helps some. ^_^

~YYF

[Mercurio]

VIDEO CARD 2: NONE change this too...
VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX260 896MB 16X PCI Express (This is to make Dalaran run smooth)
420W power supply needs to change to 700w or so

everything else looks good to me

Thanks for the feedback! However, I'm a bit confused by your reply - does this mean you think I need 2 video cards? Won't the GTX260 be enough to run my single 30" monitor without issues?

And even if I bought a second video card, is there some way to use both of their capabilities to run a single monitor better? (Is this SLI or xfire or something? - I'm not too up on the application of these things though I have read a number of posts discussing them). Currently I use a single 8800 GT card to run the 30" monitor and it seems to do fine, so I figured a single GTX260 would be more than enough.

[Mercurio]

change this to an SSD, it can drastically improve performance. download wow onto the SSD and symlink it on the other HDD's. SSD's have extremely good read times, not as good write times though so don't load the OS on the SSD.

In what I read from the forums, it seemed the consensus that two decent HHDs in a Raid 0 configuration was superior to an SSD. Or at least very competitive with the SSD while costing less. If the SSD is actually superior, I would probably just get a single HDD, ignore the Raid 0 config, and use the SSD for my WoW folder. Anyone care to weigh in on which is better (2 HDDs with Raid 0 vs 1 HDD for Windows and other files and 1 SDD for WoW)?


oh and weather you go with 1 or 2 video cards you need a bigger PSU. for that system you need a minimum of probably 500w (600w+ is probably better). if you go with 2 GPU's you should have a minimum of probably 700w.

Hope this helps some. ^_^

Thanks Yo-Yo, power supply upgrade integrated into the configuration. And yes, that helps a lot :)

[Yo-Yo Freak]

currently WoW does not take advantage of SLI/XFire, or atleast i can't find any hard evidence that it does. people say it does people say it doesn't and you know how that kind of thing goes... but anyway, just one GTX 260 should be more then enough to power your monitor and box WoW. the only problem though is that your 30" will be running at such a high resolution, if you wanted to add another monitor of just about any size, you would be maxing out the resolution output of your graphics card. this will result in drasticly lowering the performance of the card. so if you ever plan on running more monitors you should consider getting another graphics card. if you want this computer to be more of an all around better gaming computer you should get another of the exact same card so you can run them in SLI to increas performance in games like COD 1-5, Left for Dead, Crysis, FarCry 2 and all those other graphics intensive games with ~40 fps average.

what SLI/XFire does is it basicly combines multiple GPU's to produce higher performance. it also increases the resolution output of a single DVI/VGA monitor output, a must for soemthing like the TripleHead2Go. just do a quick google and you will find limitless info on what SLI/XFire is.

Hope this helps some. ^_^

~YYF

[Mercurio]

OK, so my updated configuration is (major or changed components in red):

CASE: ($20 off Mail-in Rebate) NEW! Apevia X-Jupiter Jr. 420 Watts Case (G Type Metallic Gray Color with Side-Window)
Neon Light Upgrade: NONE
Extra Case Fan Upgrade: Default case fans
POWER SUPPLY Upgrade: 680 Watts Power Supplies (Hush Power Supply SLI/CrossFire Ready)
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-920 2.66 GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366
COOLING FAN : Thermaltake V1 Gaming CPU Cooling Fan (Excellent Overclocking + Silent Proof + Smart CPU & System Thermal Monitor)
MOTHERBOARD: Asus P6T Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Mainboard Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 SATA RAID w/ eSATA, GbLAN, USB2.0, IEEE1394a, & 7.1Audio
MEMORY: 12GB (6x2GB) PC1333 DDR3 PC3 10666 Triple Channel Memory (Corsair or Major Brand)
VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX260 896MB 16X PCI Express (Major Brand Powered by NVIDIA)
VIDEO CARD 2: NONE
VIDEO CARD 3: NONE
LCD Monitor: NONE
2nd Monitor: NONE
HARD DRIVE: Extreme Performance (RAID-0) with 2 Identical Hard Drives (1TB (500GBx2) SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)
Data Hard Drive: 500GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM Hard Drive
USB PORTABLE DRIVE: NONE
Optical Drive: Sony 20X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive (BLACK COLOR)
Optical Drive 2: NONE
SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
SPEAKERS: NONE
NETWORK: ONBOARD 10/100 NETWORK CARD
MODEM: NONE
KEYBOARD: (Keyboard & Mouse Combo) Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 3200 Laser Cordless Keyboard & Mouse Combo
MOUSE: XtremeGear Optical USB 3 Buttons Gaming Mouse
Extra Thermal Display : NONE
Wireless 802.11B/G Network Card: NONE
Flash Media Reader/Writer: None
Cable Wiring: None
Rounded Cable: None
VIDEO CAMERA: NONE
PRINTER: None
PRINTER CABLE: None
IEEE CARD: NONE
USB PORT: Built-in USB 2.0 Ports
FLOPPY: NONE
OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium w/ Service Pack 1 (64-bit Edition)
FREEBIES: None
Media Center Remote Control & TV Tuner: None
SERVICE: STANDARD WARRANTY: 3-YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY PLUS LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT
RUSH SERVICE: NO; READY TO SHIP IN 5~10 BUSINESS DAYS

If I don't get any other feedback from "the masters" (you guys), I'll order this from Cyberpower in the next couple of days. Thanks again for the help!

[Yo-Yo Freak]

looks good, should do what you want fairly well. only advice i have is that i would probably change/add a blue-ray player, but i don't know if you already have a blue-ray dvd player for a tv. if you don't i would suggest getting this, it won't improve your computers performance at all but you can watch HD movies on your monitor.

other then what i mentiond above it seems just fine.

~YYF

[BobGnarly]

I think you'll find that with computer components, much like anything else, there is a lot of opinion mixed in with the facts. So, having said that, here's my feedback:

System looks pretty good overall. I agree with the PSU upgrade.

As far as the video, I can tell you that right now I'm running a gtx260 on a 30" monitor and I'm not satisfied with the Northrend performance. However, I am sure that my (greatest) bottleneck is CPU (Core Duo), so I'm building myself an i7 machine as well. My feeling is that once I do, a single gtx 260 will be sufficient. However, they are currently running about $240 so I just decided to go ahead and get another one. No reason to build a BA machine and then hobble it for that kind of money

BTW, I believe that WoW will use SLI just fine. Where it gets tricky is if you want to use multiple monitors (I do). Currently, X-fire works over multiple monitors and SLI doesn't, but Nvidia is planning to fix that RSN as I understand. I think where a lot of this "wow doesn't make use of SLI" comes from is that wow isn't a very GPU intensive game so something like SLI is usually overkill, but that's not necessarily true when you are running multiple clients at these types of resolutions.

My advice: Get your computer and see how it runs. If it's not good enough, get another 260 and SLI them and see how that goes.

Regarding the hard disk: I don't recommend RAID for two primary reasons. 1) most of the commodity m/b raid controllers are not hardware solutions meaning they will not perform nearly as well as you might think AND they are using you CPU more than a non-raid configuration. 2) The little performance increase I noticed on the last two I tried was not worth the fact that if either disk fails or the RAID parameters get reset you lose all data. It's not like other types of failures where you might be able to stick the drive in another computer as a slave and recover the information. When RAID0 goes bad it goes really bad.

FWIW, I have found the best multibox wow setup to be an SSD with the WoW Data directory (don't need the other directories - there isn't that much there and SSD drives aren't swift on writes so you don't want changing configuration data and such on it) that is symlinked into multiple wow folders as needed, all on the same drive - this is currently how I have mine setup. If you're interested in why, there are quite a few threads around here about it, but that's been the best configuration I've found.

Good luck, and enjoy the new computer.

[pinotnoir]

I just bit the bullet and ordered some stuff from new egg.

1 x ($329.99) VGA SAPPHIRE 100270SR HD4850X2 RT - Retail $329.99
1 x ($294.99) CPU INTEL|CORE I7 920 2.66G 45N R - Retail $294.99
1 x ($398.99) MB ASUS RAMPAGE II EXTREME X58 RT - Retail $398.99
2 x ($239.00) MEM 2Gx3|CORS TR3X6G1600C8D R - Retail $478.00
1 x ($129.99) HD 1.5T|ST ST31500341AS 7K 32M % - OEM $129.99
2 x ($89.99) HD 750|WD 7K 32M SATA2 WD7501AALS R - OEM $179.98

I thought about doing the SSD drive and then a regular hard drive. I ended up with buying 2 WD 750gig that I will setup in raid 0 and a 1.5t for data/backup. For 3T of data it cost $308. Thats about the same price as a raptor 300g or a nice SSD. If you have money to spare go for the SSD but if you want to save some money and not worry about the very small performance increase of a SSD go with raid 0.

[-silencer-]

In what I read from the forums, it seemed the consensus that two decent HHDs in a Raid 0 configuration was superior to an SSD. Or at least very competitive with the SSD while costing less. If the SSD is actually superior, I would probably just get a single HDD, ignore the Raid 0 config, and use the SSD for my WoW folder. Anyone care to weigh in on which is better (2 HDDs with Raid 0 vs 1 HDD for Windows and other files and 1 SDD for WoW)?
Read my SSD review in my sig..

I have now played with 5 configurations of hard drives with an SSD, with all other components of the machine the same:
2 36GB Raptors in RAID0 (host OS/swapfile, apps, games) with SSD (host WoW/data directorly via symlink)
1 36GB Raptor (host OS/swapfile), 1 36GB Raptor (host apps/games), with SSD (host WoW/data directory via symlink)
1 300GB Velociraptor (host OS/swapfile), 1 7200rpm WD black 500GB drive (host apps/games), with SSD (host WoW/data directory via symlink)
2 300GB Velociraptors (host OS/swapfile, apps/games) with SSD (host WoW/data directory via symlink)
1 7200rpm WD black 500GB drive with SSD (host WoW/data directory via symlink)

I've also tested configurations without an SSD, with all other components of the machine the same:
2 36GB Raptors in RAID0 (hosting OS/apps/games)
36GB Raptor (host OS/apps/games), 36GB Raptor (host WoW/data via symlink)
300GB Velociraptor (host OS/apps/games), 2 36GB Raptors in RAID0 (host WoW/data via symlink)
2 300GB Velociraptors (host OS/apps/games), 2 36GB Raptors in RAID0 (host WoW/data via symlink)

Since I did all this before WotLK came out, I was looking for playability of 6-boxing in Shatt.. my conclusion::
If you're extremely limited on cash, get one inexpensive 7200rpm drive for the OS & games and one small SSD to host the WoW/data directory via symlink.
If you're limited on cash, get one fast drive (Raptor or Velociraptor) for the OS & games and one small SSD to host the WoW/data directory via symlink.
If you've got plenty of cash, get one fast drive (Raptor or Velociraptor) for the OS & games and get two small SSD's in RAID0 for hosting the the WoW/data directory via symlink.

Raptors/Velociraptors are great, but even in RAID0, they can't compete with a single SSD's ultra-low seek times. Even the slower MLC SSDs are vastly superior to 10k drives for fetching many small files.
Raptors/Velociraptors in RAID0 will usually be a little faster in loading a zone/instance, but they fall short on the multitude of thousands of small fetches - the main cause of hard disk lag in cities / busy areas.

[-silencer-]

If you have money to spare go for the SSD but if you want to save some money and not worry about the very small performance increase of a SSD go with raid 0.
That's simply inaccurate, especially now that there are many sub-$200 options available for 30-64GB SSDs. OCZ even has 30GB models for $75. Even slow MLC SSDs are going to be much faster than RAID0 10k rpm drives for fetching thousands of small files. We're not using writes during gameplay, so the main fault of an SSD is not an issue for us.

I'd build a system with a cheap main drive ($60-$70 500GB 7200rpm drive) and an OCZ Core V2 60GB SSD ($195) for less than $300 than waste time with RAID'ing 7200rpm drives. I tested using an old 7200rpm drive as my main OS/gaming drive with a 64GB OCZ Core SSD hosting WoW/data, and it had far less lag in busy areas like Shatt than using RAID0 Raptors. Storage space is cheap to add when you need it later - we're talking about what's an cost-effective way of reducing lag while multiboxing WoW. It's proven time and again that SSDs are far superior for our use over any 10k/7200rpm RAID0 arrays.

[pinotnoir]

If you have money to spare go for the SSD but if you want to save some money and not worry about the very small performance increase of a SSD go with raid 0.
That's simply inaccurate, especially now that there are many sub-$200 options available for 30-64GB SSDs. OCZ even has 30GB models for $75. Even slow MLC SSDs are going to be much faster than RAID0 10k rpm drives for fetching thousands of small files. We're not using writes during gameplay, so the main fault of an SSD is not an issue for us.

I'd build a system with a cheap main drive ($60-$70 500GB 7200rpm drive) and an OCZ Core V2 60GB SSD ($195) for less than $300 than waste time with RAID'ing 7200rpm drives. I tested using an old 7200rpm drive as my main OS/gaming drive with a 64GB OCZ Core SSD hosting WoW/data, and it had far less lag in busy areas like Shatt than using RAID0 Raptors. Storage space is cheap to add when you need it later - we're talking about what's an cost-effective way of reducing lag while multiboxing WoW. It's proven time and again that SSDs are far superior for our use over any 10k/7200rpm RAID0 arrays.

Dude your post count is 666 the number of the beast!!! :evil: You need to screenshot that.
SSD's are super expensive. If you figure $ per gig its hella expensive vs a normal hd. I am going to use 2 pc's to box once I get my new stuff setup. SSD are good but they cost you. I will only be running 3 wows off this new system so 2 7200 drives in raid 0 with 12gig ram it should fly. If I stuck with 1 pc for 5 accounts I would prob spend the money for the SSD. I think breaking it up to two pc's is going to be the best thing for me in the long run.

[Tsunami]

one suggestion I have is to make your data drive larger than your raid0. e.g. 500gb raid0 w/ 750gb data drive. use the data drive as a backup drive and storage of data that is not accessed often, e.g. music and photos.

the core i7 supports raid0 on the motherboard, since using a raid0 is much cheaper today than an ssd i would wait 6-9 months, prices of SSD's will come down and the capacity will go up. if you use SSD's or not you will still need the data drive so that is not wasted money. 2x 250gb HHD's are pretty cheap, I would go this route until you can go SSD raid0.

[Mercurio]

Thanks a ton for all the configuration advice - this is the system I ordered:

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-920 2.66 GHz 8M L3 Cache
CD: LG 20X DVD+/-R/+/-RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER (SILVER COLOR [+7])
FAN: Thermaltake V1 Gaming CPU Cooling Fan (Excellent Overclocking + Silent Proof + Smart CPU & System Thermal Monitor)
HDD: Single Hard Drive (500GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)
HDD2: 64 GB Ritek RiDATA 2.5 inch SATA Gaming MLC Solid State Disk (Nearly Instant Data Access Technology)
MOTHERBOARD: Asus P6T Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Mainboard Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 SATA RAID w/ eSATA,GbLAN,USB2.0,IEEE1394a,&7.1Audio
MEMORY: 12GB (6x2GB) PC1333 DDR3 PC3 10666 Triple Channel Memory
OS: Microsoft(R) Windows Vista(TM) Home Premium w/ Service Pack 1
POWERSUPPLY: 650 Watts Power Supplies (Corsair CMPSU-650TX - Quad SLI Ready)
VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce GTX260 896MB 16X PCI Express [+214] (Major Brand Powered by NVIDIA)

As you can see, I decided to go with a regular HDD for the OS and a cheapish ($185) SSD drive that I'll use for WoW. Hopefully everything else is up to par.

The total came up to almost $2000, so with that expenditure I really appreciate your guidance. In 2 weeks or so I should be playing in style!

[Yo-Yo Freak]

Grats, i hope the computer works out well for you. ^_^ don't forget to keep us updated!

~YYF