Just after a second opinion on this build I’ve speced up on a new PC and thought what better place to ask than a forum full of IT people! I’m completely out of the loop hardware wise, I find it’s best to ignore the progress of hardware once I’ve bought or built something as it only depress me how much prices drop for the spec after 6 months.

I planning this build but am stuck on what RAM.

Mother board. Asus P8P67 LE Rev 3 Intel P67 Express Socket 1155

CPU Intel CPU Core i5 2400 Sandy Bridge Quad Core Processor

GPU MSI NVIDIA GT 430 Graphics Card – 2GB

SSD 120GB SSD Corsair Force Series 3 Series SATA III

+ HDD e.t.c

What ‘s the deal with memory now? Corsair a good brand like they are for power supplies? The motherboard states 32 Gb capacity but is that all dual channel or only up to 16Gb? Can you get 8 GB modules, I can only find 4 GB modulus which would suggest 16 Gb max. Best to max out the dual channel I guess rather than drop back to single channel?

Opinions welcome on the matching of the rest of the build.

First check the Asus site on that board for tested memory modules. I have had problems in the past with Asus boards and corsair memory. You won’t need more than 8gig of ram unless you are running a program which uses masses of ram – photo editing with massive files etc. most new boards are triple channel so 3 x 2 gig etc.

Unless you’re building a server, you’ll not notice any difference between 4GB and 32GB, in my opinion.

Get the cheapest branded memory you can find – Scan are doing a good deal on Corsair at the minute. £22. Job done.

I hope you’ve already bought your HDD. Have you seen the recent price jumps?!

Edit – i forgot it’s triple channel. Bloody Intel… Try this. Bit more expensive, but nothing drastic.

I’d be wary of the SSD you’ve selected, I’m on my third FS3 from corsair after the others kept BSODing, and this one seems little better 🙁

I’m guessing by your chosen graphics card, you’re not building a PC for gaming?

For a similar speed to the intel spec you’ve given, you can get an AMD Phenom xII 955 and an asus M5A97 motherboard for less cash, and pretty much the same speed.

If you are after playing modern games, I’d consider matching your processor with a graphics card along the lines of an ATI 6850 for around £130

4GB of RAM should be good enough for most things. 2x2GB sticks, and corsair are a reasonable brand. If you think you want more memory, you’ll have to be running a 64Bit operating system to make use of it.

Edit – i forgot it’s triple channel. Bloody Intel… Try this. Bit more expensive, but nothing drastic.

The motherboard the OP has selected only supports DDR3 in duel channel mode, so your original link is fine..

The OCZ Vertex 3 SSDs rip. Regular hard drive prices are insane right now due to the Thailand floods.

And DDR3 is so cheap right now you may as well get 8gb of Corsair pc1600 from Scan.

Edit: Or even better these, great overclocking ram the G.skill – http://www.memoryc.com/computermemory/ddr3ram/8gbgskillddr3pc312800ripjawsxseriesforsandybridge.html

If I am not mistaken Corsiar SSD is a major headache to use. Search on the net and you will fine too many people complaining about its reliability. I would go for either Intel’s or Samsung’s SSD.

+1 jonk.
Really is essential you check with Asus for the recommended mem. I have an Asus M4A785TD-v Evo m/b and bought Corsair XMS3 4gb RAM for it and suffered problems for ages. Random BSOD. I ended up selling the RAM (which is fine for a work colleague) and buying some recommended stuff and all my problems went away.
Buy your mem as a pair, 2x2GB should be sufficient.

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8P67/#MSL

Are you using it for gaming or graphic intensive stuff? Just asking as you could change and get a board with onboard graphics. Fine for general PC software, even video editing (CPU intensive). I didnt bother getting a GC and its fine (but I dont play games on PC)

I assumed Asus had sorted their act out, but I stopped using them years ago due to shoddy QC and loads of failures, I mainly use Gigabyte and failing that MSI, I think I’ve only had one Gigabyte mobo fail out of hundreds, which typically was mine but otherwise no issues.

Corsair GX series PSUs have pretty stable rails and a 5 year warranty which is nice.

I have “killed” two Asus motherboards and an OCZ SSD in the past year…caused me no end of headaches as all three were semi-intermittent death and it took months for me to realise there was more than one component failing!
I now have a Gigabyte GA-990XA-UD3 and a phenom x6 CPU. Flippin brilliant build. Though I think that the sandybridge you are after is a smidge faster.
So for me…corsair for memory and PSU and Gigabyte for motherboard.
OCZ and Asus are off my list for now. MSI are good, I have had several of their boards over the years.
(Disclaimer, you will find any combination of dont buy brand XYZ on the internet so make up your own predujices!).

I have had problems in the past with Asus boards and corsair memory

Thanks, worth noting.

most new boards are triple

I think the one I’ve listed states dual but I may be wrong….

I hope you’ve already bought your HDD.

Yep already have a spare that I’m going to use.

I’m guessing by your chosen graphics card, you’re not building a PC for gaming?

Nope, not really although I might play the odd game. Development and experimentation, (I have plans of initial using it to play with some HD videos as well) might run virtual machine as well but only one at a time. I’m just starting to play with some graphics programming but will most likely be 2D stuff. (Looking at this lib).

If you are after playing modern games, I’d consider matching your processor with a graphics card along the lines of an ATI 6850 for around £130

I primarily work in Linux so favour Nvidia, but I don’t know if ATI have caught up on the graphics front? Got any Nvida suggestions, my knowledge of graphics cards is pretty low, last PC I built was about 6 year ago and as I said once built I just walked away!

Kieran – Member
I’d be wary of the SSD you’ve selected, I’m on my third FS3 from corsair after the others kept BSODing, and this one seems little better

Any better suggestions? I’ve also been worn off SSDs with marvel chipsets.

Are you using it for gaming or graphic intensive stuff? Just asking as you could change and get a board with onboard graphics. Fine for general PC software, even video editing (CPU intensive). I didnt bother getting a GC and its fine (but I dont play games on PC)

Not really gaming much as mentioned above but one of the reasons I wanted a separate GPU was to one day have a go at GPU programming for numerical simulations, I haven’t really looked deeply into it yet but it’s an idea for the future and hence I want a PC that’s capable.

The only SSDs I’d put my own money into are Intel or Crucial.

As said, unless you have very specific needs (and you’ll know if you do) 4GB RAM will be plenty. More of it means that things like hibernate (so your PC can “sleep” but be completely off) will be slower, and for typical home use you won’t get any performance benefit to balance it out.

I’d pay the extra £20 for the 2500K version of that processor – if you did want to overclock, it’s much easier with the unlocked (K) versions. If you’re not interested in overclocking at all then a P67 board seems a bit pointless – you could go for a H67 or even H61 chipset one instead and save some money. If you’re not gaming (and a 430 card suggest not) then you tend to get integrated Intel graphics which are fine for general purpose use, including the odd older game.

@CHB and schrickvr6 Thanks for the extra info re ASUS, I’m on an aOpen at the moment and that’s been solid.

P67 board seems a bit pointless – you could go for a H67 or even H61 chipset one instead and save some money.

Interesting thanks, I was recommended the P67 chip-set by someone at work hence look at them but he is mad on over-clocking, got a phase change cooling system and all.

Oh ya my ASUS P7P55M is giving me constant BSOD every 3 days. Yes, every 3 days. Not sure what the problem is but it keeps telling me that the followings are crashing:

1. Catalyst Control Centre (CCC.exe)
2. Desktop Window manager.
3. spoolsv.exe
4. Windows explorer
5. taskhost.exe
6. MOM.exe
7. TurboKey.exe

I think the problem might be my cheapo ATI card (£30) or perhaps my Corsair memory (4GB need to check vendor list …arrghh) is giving me constant BSOD every three days if that helps.

Anyone any idea?

When I get BSOD I have to keep rebooting until everything is goes back to normal and when it works it is fast.

Could anyone also let me know why my pooter get BSOD if I do not boot it up after 1 day?

More appropriate m’board for a non over clocker?

No problems using ATI cards on Linux, got a 6950 on my desktop and a 4250 on my laptop both using Ubuntu and the AMD drivers. See here for all the options on the various permutations of drivers available http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Main_Page and how to install/update them.

More RAM does help if you are running a VM or two, but it’s worth checking if your CPU supports hardware virtualisation (VT-X on Intel) as some guests might not work without it, not all Intel CPU’s come with it.

Anyone any idea?

Memtest.

Malwarebytes.

Memtest.

Malwarebytes.

+ Seatools

Could always run the PC off a Linux Live CD/USB for a few days and see if it dies then or not, also means you’ll usually have the boot option to run Memtest86 too.

I’d go for AMD over intel if you’re mainly going to be using linux – that way you can use the 64-bit versions of linux.

I got a motherboard bundle from Novatech about a year ago with an AMD 890GX chipset mobo, AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Processor, 4Gb RAM, USB 2.0 & a couple of USB 3 ports. I stuck the nVidia GeForce 9500 GT graphics card from my old PC in there and it all works fine. In fact I first booted it up with the HDD with the Ubuntu install that I’d had in my old PC and after about an extra 30secs of thinking it ran with no problems 🙂

I’ve been running Ubuntu 10.4 and Vbox with WinXP on my new hardware without any issues (asides from the usual ones with Windows 🙄 ) as it supports hardware virtulisation.

Cougar – Member

Anyone any idea?

Memtest.

Malwarebytes.

Malwarebytes always come up all clean. Well, this pc has never ventured into the “sexy” website put it this way.

OK which version of Memtest do I need? i.e. which reliable website?

schrickvr6 – Member

+ Seatools

Will give that a go too.

Oh ya … previously I was using Gigabyte and it too gave me BSOD after a period of time if I did not boot up. Say 12 or 24 hour without booting and when I boot it up it gave me BSOD. In the end the Gigabyte mobo just refused to boot up. Dead. Send it back for repair and was told it was repaired but I never used it since it got back instead I transferred everything to my Asus P7P55m. Damn!

😥

Chewkw, try and borrow some alternative RAM. My board passed all memtests, yet it turned out to be the mem.

If you are going to be doing video editing with Premiere, I suggest a NVidia graphics card with CUDA cores, this will take some of the processing power off the CPU for the GPU to do.

I have 8gb RAM and can run out, but I’m editing multiple layered HD videos.

Rather than a SSD, have a look at the Velociraptors, cheaper and you get more space for the money, yet still damn fast!

Running 2 WD Raptors over here, in RAID 0.

600GB of space, yet blisteringly fast!

can the ATI – get nvidia.

Memory is so cheap atm you might as well go large. Just bought 12Gb of Kingston for only £69.

Running 2 WD Raptors over here, in RAID 0.

I hope you mean RAID1.

Why do you hope RAID 1?

The OCZ Vertex 3 SSDs rip

Got them in our work PCs, no complaints at all.

Why do you hope RAID 1?

Friends don’t let friends run RAID 0 without a really really good reason, and stats to back up that reason.

I’d go for AMD over intel if you’re mainly going to be using linux – that way you can use the 64-bit versions of linux.

Don’t understand that. Just some sources are marked amd64 doesn’t mean you can’t run x64 Linux on intel. These days I’d always go Intel, AMD have dropped the ball.

EDIT: If you want VT extensions for KVM virtualisation, check THIS list

Why do you hope RAID 1?

Because if you’ve got two disks in a RAID 0 configuration, you’ve just increased the likelyhood of array failure by 100% without building in any redundancy.

You’re right though, I don’t actually hope at all, I couldn’t care less. I was just being polite.

(-:

LOL I love how you assume I’m a clueless n00b! Prior to these 300GB Raptors, I had mk1 150Gb Raptors, and prior to that 36Gb 15k SCSIs.. all with hardware RAID controllers, with RAID 0… I like a fast snappy desktop…

@ fluffykittens – 64bit has been around for a LONG time on servers, but only since about 2003 on the ‘home desktop’ – with the AMD Athlon64

So when the OSS community started porting 32bit Linux to 64bit, the only available processor to them was the AMD Athlon64 line. Intel’s 64bit desktop CPUs didn’t come until a few years later.

Initially they started to write code which was directed towards AMD64, but later it became more ‘generic’ across both Intel and AMD’s 64bit platform.

The amd64 ‘label’ has stuck around for legacy reasons (Debian, for example still uses it as their generic x86-64 distro. IA64 is for the Intel ‘Itanium Architecture’ 64bit, which is a different CPU to the desktop series.

AMD have dropped the ball.

Well they’ve picked it up again with Bulldozer.

I love how you assume I’m a clueless n00b!

No assumptions at all; I know you’re not, I’ve seen previous posts. “Surprised” would be more accurate.

Still, ‘s not my data.

For me (plus mrs xiphon) faster IO is more important than faster CPU, especially for our usage requirements ( I use vmware extensively )

We a couple of other drives (internal: primary; external eSATA: backup) attached to the PC too.

I’ll probably upgrade to SSD RAID 0 when the prices come down…

Nothing wrong with RAID 0, it all depends on how the machine is setup. My RAID 0 is only used as a scratch disk/pagefile. 😉

I would definitely go with the Intel Sandy Bridge Chips, they can be blisteringly fast, for not a lot of money.

I recommend the Western Digital Cavier Black drives in addition to Velociraptor Drive or SSD, don’t go for green or blue they are quite slow!

Well they’ve picked it up again with Bulldozer.

Only a true AMD fanboy would say that with any conviction. Too late, too slow and too expensive. Under some workloads it’s actually slower than their previous generation. Lots of promised improvements on future generations, but that’s making the big assumption that AMD will be around that long.

fluffykittens – Member
I’d go for AMD over intel if you’re mainly going to be using linux – that way you can use the 64-bit versions of linux.

???? From memory there is no requirement to use AMD when installing 64 bit linux. From memory (although it’s been a year or so since I’ve done so) there is even option for intel optimised kernel if / when you compile.

Thanks for the tips on SSDs. Going to try and have another hunt through specs tonight.