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From Scratch- New i7 system... suggestions

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I am looking to build a system under $2000, but a powerhouse. I need to do a LOT of virtual machine work, and Multiple OS's. 12 GB Ram, i7.

I am a mac user... but work requires many versions of windows server and linux for testing.

What components -for an entire build - would you recommend? Is there a shop out there that builds these (sans OSX of course)?

I am hoping for the best possible system under 2k. Any and all feedback is appreciated. I prefer nVidia, but am open.


There is just tons of info out there, and sometimes it is conflicting.

Thanks again.

Speakend
 
There are several post on suggested hardware. Core i7 860 with a Gigabyte MB based on the P55 chipset. Read the blog a bit and look at what the other users have. Most everyone has their specs in their signature. My machine cost less than $1000 sans monitor and it'll run as fast as the new core i7 iMacs with more ram and a true 64bit kernel. It is faster than some of the older Mac Pros. You might want a faster graphics card than I got but I went for maximum compatibility and the 9500GT is very easy to get working. I think you will be hard pressed to actually spend $2000 unless you go all out on some stuff like case etc...
 
I have a few Hackintosh systems. I also do a lot of work with virtual computers, Linux, networking, video editing... I need a power house too.

The p55 boards are great and the one p55-i7-860 that I have is a great system, but honestly I love my 1366-i7-950 above all others.

One of my friends is in a similar situation to you. He has some money now but he wants to be able to upgrade his system as more money becomes available. I told him to get a GA-EX58-UD5 with an i7-920 and 4 Gigs of RAM. This way he has tons of overhead for future upgrading. The EX58-UD5 can handle 8 hard drives, 24Gigs of ram, 2 video cards and you can even plug in a much faster CPU later if you want to spend $1000 bucks on a CPU in the future.

The P55 Boards are really nice and really well priced but their overhead for potential upgrading is more limited than the EX58 series.

You won't be disappointed with a P55 and you will find a lot of great people and support on this forum but if you really want a ton of overhead, I'm saying EX58.

Just my 2 cents.

Best regards

rabbit.
 
Not sure if anyone on the forum has something working on Gulftown 980x 6 core/12 thread at 32nm, but that could get you up to 2k!

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2960

Rabbit's points above make sense...

There is a group here in that makes them...

Search SF bay area craigslist for Hackintosh...

They quoted...for Hackintosh...OS on already(off the record)...

"We do offer the Gulftown model. In the i7 930 setup we offer the base price of $1499 with 6GB RAM, our 12GB model is $1749."

I looked at them before deciding I wanted to be able to do it myself, learn, and save some money. Tony's forum made that possible for the P55 systems and I really like my system for what I do. It was my first total build, took ~ 2 hours to put together. Installing took ~ 1.5 hours. My system was just under 1k.

The MB, processor and graphics are most important in terms of picking something that is compatible and supported by Tony's setup:

- If you decide P55 is OK, Core i7 860 with a P55-UD5 board would be a good bet..
- A super proven graphics card like a EVGA 9800 GT 1GB (I have dual 24's running off it with Tony's DSDTs on Multibeast, no further edits, kexts etc). See the OSX86 list of supported cards, but most nvidia cards seem pretty easy to get working.
- Sony optiarc SATA optical drive (I just copied what Tony bought, mine works great) has worked for a lot of people, some folks had a hard time with the LG's.

You would be good to go with Tony's Iboot and Multibeast. Picking a board with the 889a (like the P55-UD5) audio makes getting audio working easier, if you care, but you can always just run a USB audio and not have to worry about it. If you end up hating the hackintosh route you can always use Ubuntu etc as long as you go with an nvidia card.

That said, I am pretty new to this, but did my homework for about 2 weeks before buying which made the setup easy and it worked perfectly first try once I had hardware picked based on other peoples builds. Others likely have more experience. It seems like there are more vanilla systems out there than the gigabyte based boards, but Tony makes it so easy I think it is a reasonable way to go.
 
easy, get 2 BIG monitors, good speakers, good case, then good components. The monitors can always be bigger...
 
OK. any thoughts? have done a bit of research.

1Terabyte 3Gb/sec Hard Drive

Amazingly Fast Processor with 4 cores and 8 working threads Intel i7 860 @ 3.4Ghz or faster Rock solid stable.

Mugen II CPU cooler

Gigabyte P55A-X55-UD4P

MSI 260GTX PCI-E Video card with special cooling for OC to run and benchmark as fast as a GTX285 if desired

Lite-on DVD burner

Silent Atec sonata 3 ATX Case with Silent Antec Earthwatts 750W power supply. Sound dampening at every possible turn. Room for 4 HD and 3 optical drives.

Will 10.6.3 run under SATA3 (6GB drive)?

Are there any known issues with memory at that speed, or specifics on DVD burner that I may be missing?

Any pro's or Con's?
MUCH appreciated
thx-
Speakend
 
I am not familiar with the MB you listed...

Here is a list of P55 MBs that work with the 860 and are well supported here...

http://www.giga-byte.com/Products/Mothe ... 1156#Intel

Any of the P55 boards...

Tony has premade setups for many of them in Gigabeast, check that out...

For your situation I would suggest the GA-P55-UD5 as it has the 889a audio, and a ton of slots. Macman uses it. If you meant the GA-P55-UD4p or the GA-P55a-UD4p note that one has the 889a audio, and one had the 889 audio(easy to confuse). If you have the choice go 889a to make audio setup a little more vanilla.
 
speakend said:
OK. any thoughts? have done a bit of research.
1Terabyte 3Gb/sec Hard Drive
Amazingly Fast Processor with 4 cores and 8 working threads Intel i7 860 @ 3.4Ghz or faster Rock solid stable.
Mugen II CPU cooler
Gigabyte P55A-X55-UD4P
MSI 260GTX PCI-E Video card with special cooling for OC to run and benchmark as fast as a GTX285 if desired
I'm not familiar with that board, nor the 260GTX...
However, based on your requirements, it seems a P55M-UD4 or a P55-UD5 might be enough.

speakend said:
Lite-on DVD burner
Just make sure you don't get an LG optical... I, and others, had some issues (search the forum) with it, but not everybody.

speakend said:
Silent Atec sonata 3 ATX Case with Silent Antec Earthwatts 750W power supply.
Personally, I don't like the HDD cage layout in the Sonata 3 (as it blocks air flow => hotter system => faster fans => more noise).
I'd recommend you the Antec Designer 500, or the Solo (same as Designer, sans PSU, and in black)...
Additional bonus is the HDD suspension mechanism, which helps dampening the HDD vibration/noise.

My build on the Antec Designer 500 is amazingly quiet (less than my Early 2008 MBP 17" and WD Studio edition 1TB).
Surprisingly, even with the case open, the Mugen 2 Rev.B is very quiet !

speakend said:
Sound dampening at every possible turn. Room for 4 HD and 3 optical drives
Check out also http://www.silentpcreview.com/article245-page1.html
Regarding GPU, not sure if it's enough for you but my passive 9800 is... pricey, but 100% silent.

Good luck !
 
I was aiming for a quiet build, and it is silent when I take the GTX 260 out and put a passively cooled GS8400 in (which I borrowed from my home theater hackintosh when I installed the system). Unfortunately I need the GTX 260 as I built the machine to run 3D modeling software. My first choice was the MSI GTX 260 but the case I am using does not work well with cards that vent back into the case so I ended up with a fairly noisy eVGA GTX 260 instead.

The low profile G.Skill Eco ram works well, anything with a bulkier heatsink would get in the way of the CPU cooler and fan. Overall I am pretty happy with the system. The SSD is incredible, and graphics are supper smooth for what I do. My only regret is that I could not afford to raid two SSD's together for even faster open and saves of big CAD files. The one issue I have is with my Huey Pro software that flashes the screen everytime it updates the monitor profile / room light color correction.
 
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