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So, I was thinking of going with the double stuff workstation as my new build, but I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to changes to it. Also, is it better to hold out for certain sales or new tech that will be released soon?

What applications will you run on this PC?

I won't be doing anything special just the internet, watching movies, photoshop, office. The most intensive thing I do on my computer would have to be gaming. I think you helped me out with my last computer which was approximately three years ago. Thanks for all the help!

What is the native resolution of your monitor?

If you're gaming on a single 2560x1600 screen or three 1920x1200 screens in Eyefinity, you'll need a more powerful graphics card than if you have just one 1920x1080 display.

TR's system guide wrote:

Double-Stuff Workstation
$315 Intel Core i7-2600K 3.4GHz $315
$208 Asus P8Z68-V Pro
$108 2ea Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600
$560 -40MIR 2ea MSI Radeon HD 6950 2GB
$570 Intel 510 Series 240GB
$360 2ea Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 3TB
$87 -12½ combo LG WH12LS30 Blu-ray burner
$78 Asus Xonar DX
$196 -20MIR Corsair AX850W
$300 -20MIR Corsair Obsidian Series 800D
======
$2,769

Meh. That's a whole bunch of money spent on things that aren't going to help your gaming performance very much.

Instead of the Double-Stuff, consider basing your build on the Sweeter Spot, instead.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Instead of the Double-Stuff, consider basing your build on the Sweeter Spot, instead.

I have to agree with you there.


Two 3TB drives for example I really seriously doubt you need. That's enough space to store 1,300 DVDs (uncompressed), or 2 1/2 years of CD quality FLAC audio..

The blu-ray burner, if you don't KNOW you need it, then you probably don't.

You may be able to get by with a smaller SSD as well depending on how many apps/games you will be installing. More space can't hurt, but with SSDs you pay a big price for every GB. Windows 7 itself "only" takes about 15-20GB maximum.

The video card and power supply is all dependent on what monitor(s) you will be using. If you have a single 1080p monitor then I think dual GPUs is a waste. Better off just going with a single high-end card, and not having to worry about driver support/scaling, microstuttering, and higher power consumption/noise. On the other hand, if you have 3 monitors, or a 30" 2560x1600 then dual GPU will make a big difference.

lonerish wrote:

I will be.... watching movies...

travbrad wrote:

The blu-ray burner, if you don't KNOW you need it, then you probably don't.

I believe that everyone should be buying at least a Blu-ray reader. You may not want to spend $85 to be able to burn Blu-ray discs, but the $58 to be able to read Blu-ray source material in addition to obsolete DVDs is well worth the incremental cost compared to a $20 DVD burner. The $38 difference is pretty small for someone prepared to spend three grand on a Double-Stuff Workstation build.

Some suggestions:
I have the Corsair 600T case and am very pleased with it; would save some dough too. However, the 650D is a nice case too, from what people say.

I'd also recommend a single 6970 over crossfire 6950s (unless you wanna unlock the 6950s). I have crossfire 6970s, and crossfire can be suboptimal, waiting for application profiles, incompatibility, etc. Personally, if you are going to have the headaches of crossfire, I would only do that to get absolute maximum performance.

A larger PSU than is in the sweeter spot would probably be a good idea if you have any desire to do crossfire in the future; based on the 550w minimum requirement for a single gpu, probably an 850w would be a workable minimum (such as the one in the double stuff). A little higher rating sure wouldn't hurt.

Don't forget a cpu cooler unless you don't plan to overclock too much (just a humble suggestion because it will get loud and possibly eventually damage your cpu if your temps are too high for extended periods). If you're not overclocking at all, maybe the vanilla 2600 would be a better choice. The only problem being that then you are definitely locked into not overclocking.

Perhaps consider a smaller ssd and using the ssd caching available on z68 motherboards? By the way, I have 4 caviar blacks in raid-5, and for some operations they aren't nearly as fast as an ssd (I have a vertex 3, but had the bsod issue and so my os is installed on the raid-5 and I'm too lazy to change it). Raid 1 or raid 5 might be a good way to go with mass storage though, because it's definitely faster than a single drive (especially when reading).

How about some of these components?

$188 Asus P8Z68-V LGA1155 ATX motherboard

$315 Intel Core i7-2600K hyper-threading quad-core 3.4 GHz LGA1155 processor
or $220 Intel Core i5-2500K quad-core 3.3 GHz
$27 CoolerMaster Hyper 212-Plus HSF
or $38½ CoolerMaster GeminII-S RR-CCH-PBU1-GP

$96 16 GiB = 2ea 2x4 GiB PC3-12800 Corsair CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9R Vengeance (DDR3-1600, CAS 9, 1.5 V) memory
or $112 16 GiB = 2ea 2x4 GiB PC3-12800 G.Skill F3-12800CL8D-8GBXM Ripjaws-X (DDR3-1600, CAS 8, 1.5 V)

$273 -20MIR Sapphire 100312-3SR Radeon HD6950 2GB (dual BIOS) PCIe X16 graphics card
or $257½ -10MIR EVGA 01G-P3-1567-KR Superclocked GeForce GTX560Ti 1GB (900 MHz)
or $241 Gigabyte GV-R695OC-1GD Radeon HD6950 1GB (870 MHz)
or $240 -20 code "EMCKAHA23" -30MIR XFX HD-695X-ZNFC Radeon HD6950 1GB

$220 -30MIR 0.12 TB Corsair Force GT SSD (SandForce SF-2281) - for OS & most-used applications
or $197 0.13 TB Crucial M4 (Marvell 9174)
or $135 0.10 TB Kingston SSDNow V+100 (Toshiba T6UG1XBG)
$60 -10 code "EMCKAGK22" 1.0 TB Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 7200 rpm hard-drive - for games, storage, etc.
or $150 3.0 TB Seagate ST33000651AS Barracuda XT
$58 Samsung SH-B123L BD-ROM/DVD-RW with PowerDVD
or $111 Lite-On iHBS212-08 Blu-ray burner with PowerDVD
$12 Rosewill RCR-AK-IM5002 3½" internal card reader w/ USB 2.0 hub

$79 Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe X1 sound card
or $0 On-board audio

$53 Antec Three Hundred ATX case
and $16 5¼" to 3½" drive bay adapter
or $90 -20MIR Antec Nine Hundred (includes 3½" bay adapter)
$85 -15MIR Corsair TX650V2 ATX power supply
or $80 -25MIR Antec Earthwatts EA-750 Green

$100 Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM

Do you need a new monitor, mouse or keyboard?

My monitors for my current is 1680 x 1050 and 1440 x 900, but I have two 1920 x 1080 monitors still in the box and waiting to be used on something worthwhile. Would you guys spruce up the money to get a third monitor to run eyefinity? Thanks for all the info!

lonerish wrote:

My monitors for my current is 1680 x 1050 and 1440 x 900, but I have two 1920 x 1080 monitors still in the box and waiting to be used on something worthwhile. Would you guys spruce up the money to get a third monitor to run eyefinity? Thanks for all the info!

That's really a decision only you can make. Eyefinity is really cool, but it's also really expensive. In addition to the extra monitor, you'll need more graphics horsepower, which in turn needs more power from the PSU.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

I believe that everyone should be buying at least a Blu-ray reader.

Yeah you might as well if you are going to be watching movies. I just meant that the burning ability probably isn't needed unless they are filming hi-def videos or something. BD-R sucks as a backup solution IMO. HDD are faster, cheaper, and harder to scratch.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

CoolerMaster Hyper 212 plus HSF

This is a really great heatsink, both my brother and I are using it (He has Phenom II X4 965, I have E8400). We are both at 4GHZ easily. It's really quiet too, I think my PSU is louder.

I recently installed a CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Plus atop a Phenom II X4 955 after one of my Corsair H70s experienced a pump failure. I wish that the CPU cooler manufacturers and the motherboard makers would standardize on one backplate and mounting bracket. I miss the days of being able to swap heatsinks without removing the motherboard from the case.

lonerish wrote:

I have two 1920 x 1080 monitors still in the box and waiting to be used on something worthwhile. Would you guys spruce up the money to get a third monitor to run Eyefinity?

That's entirely up to you. Note that any monitors that you connect after the first two will have to use DisplayPort or an active DisplayPort-to-DVI adapter. I would (and did) spring for a single high-quality IPS LCD monitor rather than several less expensive TN LCD monitors. TN LCD monitors just aren't good enough for editing photos.

Agreed on the IPS display if you're doing serious photoshop things, at least for 1 monitor.

You seem...lackadaisical about your usage. The "double stuff" is a pretty serious machine, are you sure you need that much horsepower? You don't seem very convincing.

I wouldnt think you'd see much performance difference going to a 2500k for the processor, and are you sure you need 6tb of hard drive space? The comments on getting a smaller ssd are noteworthy as well, it seems as though TR went with the 240gb variant to realize the performance gains by more parallel nand chips. 120 - 128gb may be more cost effective for a similar end-user experience (especially if this is your first SSD)

PS. Caching is for people that cant afford a big enough SSD, if you're spending $2,500+ on a system, you should be able to make a decent size SSD fit somewhere in your budget.