Would anyone mind giving me a second opinion on the computer I'm planning to build?

[BisectedBrioche]

I'm putting together a new PC. I thought I'd post it here in case I've made a bad decision somewhere;

I'm going to reuse the 8800 GTX graphics card and wireless networking card from my current PC. Apart from that;

Case: Antec 902 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/155939
PSU: Antech EarthWatts 650W http://www.ebuyer.com/product/141006
Processor: i7 930, (2.8Ghz, 8MB) http://www.ebuyer.com/product/193596
MoBo: MSI X58 PRO iX58 Socket http://www.ebuyer.com/product/160808
RAM: Crucial 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz http://www.ebuyer.com/product/159890
Main HD: Kingston 128GB SSD http://www.ebuyer.com/product/195354
Slave HD: 1.5TB HDD http://www.ebuyer.com/product/160649
Disk Drive: Samsung BD ROM w/ DVD RW http://www.ebuyer.com/product/221349

[Archonic Energy]

ooooo. shiney!

the 8800 is going to be your bottle neck but you can always upgrade that later.

apart from that, i want one!

[Cealocanth]

You're literally making a computer form scratch. Cool! :smallcool:

[BisectedBrioche]

You're literally making a computer form scratch. Cool! :smallcool:

*twitch* Yes...*twitch* please don't use the word "literally" solely for emphasis. *twitch*

[JediSoth]

Looks like a pretty good system in my self-taught opinion. I've heard you should make sure that SSD supports TRIM, though (or at least can have the BIOS updated to support TRIM).

You might want a beefier power supply if you plan on upgraded the video card. They're requiring more and more juice these days. If you're not planning on going Crossfire or SLI, you could probably get by with the 650W for most low-mid range graphics cards, but I'd bump it up to 750W - 800W for future proofing.

[Archonic Energy]

*twitch* Yes...*twitch* please don't use the word "literally" solely for emphasis. *twitch*

does that LITERALLY annoy you?

or only figurativly, sorry, but the spell check in this brain isn't working

also without a Chip press and a soldering iron it would be hard for you to literally build a PC from scratch... just sayin' :smallamused:

[BisectedBrioche]

That depends. You aren't expected to grow your own wheat and mill it into flour to make a cake from scratch, after all. :smalltongue:

[Archonic Energy]

That depends. You aren't expected to grow your own wheat and mill it into flour to make a cake from scratch, after all. :smalltongue:

technically, you'd have to engineer the wheat seeds from Amino acid chains. though i'm not sure where you would get those from?

[kusje]

I don't think anyone can really help unless you post what you're going to use the PC for. Also post your display resolution :)

[BisectedBrioche]

I just ordered the parts (I ended up getting a smaller SSD and using the spare cash to get some fan control stuff).

[Recaiden]

technically, you'd have to engineer the wheat seeds from Amino acid chains. though i'm not sure where you would get those from?

Conjure them from nothingness.

[tyckspoon]

You might want a beefier power supply if you plan on upgraded the video card. They're requiring more and more juice these days. If you're not planning on going Crossfire or SLI, you could probably get by with the 650W for most low-mid range graphics cards, but I'd bump it up to 750W - 800W for future proofing.

Mythical requirement, and worried about the wrong spec. 650 will run any single graphics card on the market today, and most of the saner SLI/Crossfire rigs (for example, it's plenty sufficient for a pair of 5770s or GTX260s); the issue is if it pushes the required amperage and if it has the necessary number and type of PCI-Express power connectors. The Antec linked is listed with only a single PCI connector, which would make it a poor choice for a multi-card rig, and it'll need a molex->PCI-X adapter for a high end card that uses multiple power connectors, but it has enough juice for them once that's sorted. Although I'm pretty sure it's wrong, as every other source I can find for that particular supply says it has 2 graphics connectors, one 6 and one 8-pin, which would make it work fine for a high-end single card or mid-grade dual card setup.

(For reference: A GTX 480, which is the most power-hungry single GPU on the market, has a maximum design draw of 250 watts. The 5970, which is a dual-GPU card, is at 294. Those are really huge numbers for a graphics card, but they're still well within the capacity of a good 650W PSU, and the whole system load with those in isn't likely to break 500.)

[JediSoth]

Mythical requirement, and worried about the wrong spec. 650 will run any single graphics card on the market today, and most of the saner SLI/Crossfire rigs (for example, it's plenty sufficient for a pair of 5770s or GTX260s); the issue is if it pushes the required amperage and if it has the necessary number and type of PCI-Express power connectors. The Antec linked is listed with only a single PCI connector, which would make it a poor choice for a multi-card rig, and it'll need a molex->PCI-X adapter for a high end card that uses multiple power connectors, but it has enough juice for them once that's sorted. Although I'm pretty sure it's wrong, as every other source I can find for that particular supply says it has 2 graphics connectors, one 6 and one 8-pin, which would make it work fine for a high-end single card or mid-grade dual card setup.

(For reference: A GTX 480, which is the most power-hungry single GPU on the market, has a maximum design draw of 250 watts. The 5970, which is a dual-GPU card, is at 294. Those are really huge numbers for a graphics card, but they're still well within the capacity of a good 650W PSU, and the whole system load with those in isn't likely to break 500.)

Sometimes I wish the manufacturers would post the specs you REALLY need, because as an average consumer, I can only base my knowledge on the information they give me.

This is one reason I stopped building my own systems. There's too much misleading information out there.

[valadil]

Mythical requirement, and worried about the wrong spec. 650 will run any single graphics card on the market today, and most of the saner SLI/Crossfire rigs (for example, it's plenty sufficient for a pair of 5770s or GTX260s); the issue is if it pushes the required amperage and if it has the necessary number and type of PCI-Express power connectors. The Antec linked is listed with only a single PCI connector, which would make it a poor choice for a multi-card rig, and it'll need a molex->PCI-X adapter for a high end card that uses multiple power connectors, but it has enough juice for them once that's sorted. Although I'm pretty sure it's wrong, as every other source I can find for that particular supply says it has 2 graphics connectors, one 6 and one 8-pin, which would make it work fine for a high-end single card or mid-grade dual card setup.

(For reference: A GTX 480, which is the most power-hungry single GPU on the market, has a maximum design draw of 250 watts. The 5970, which is a dual-GPU card, is at 294. Those are really huge numbers for a graphics card, but they're still well within the capacity of a good 650W PSU, and the whole system load with those in isn't likely to break 500.)

Citation needed. Not that I'm doubting you, I wanna read up on this stuff. Power supply requirements are the one part of PC building I never really grokked.

[tyckspoon]

Citation needed. Not that I'm doubting you, I wanna read up on this stuff. Power supply requirements are the one part of PC building I never really grokked.

Yeah, give me a few minutes here to try and find some of the more direct articles about it.. I hit some of the information on basically a wikiwalk before, and I don't remember exactly where.

..ok, Anandtech's got a reasonably concise article. (http://www.anandtech.com/show/2624)

Here's the resources if you want to try and figure out stuff yourself:
The design power draws for graphics cards can be pulled from Nvidia (http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_family.html) and ATI/AMD's (http://www.amd.com/US/PRODUCTS/DESKTOP/GRAPHICS/Pages/desktop-graphics.aspx) websites. Intel (http://ark.intel.com) has their tech specs nicely laid out and easy to find, so you can check on the power requirements for their processors and motherboards. AMD has the information on their website as well, but it's a pain in the ass to actually find it, so I'm not linking it. :smalltongue:

So, basically, you find out how much power your intended system will use at idle and max, and then you go find a power supply that has a good efficiency curve at those draw values (or just look for one with the 80 PLUS seal- those are independently certified to be at least 80% efficient at all load values. Efficiency is the measure of how much power is wasted in the process of changing the AC power from the wall supply to the various DC voltages used in the computer. High efficiency means less heat generation and less stress on the PSU, which is a good thing.)

OP has selected an i7-930 on an X58 board. Checking Intel's datasite, the processor has a maximum designed draw of 130w and the chipset is designed for 24 watts. Nvidia no longer has the full spec sheet of the 8800GTX listed, but a little googling says its maximum draw is 185w. So the core of the system requires, at full load, 339 watts, and the processor in particular won't often be used at full load. Other parts are relatively negligible; if you select a PSU that has headroom on the processor/GPU/chipset, you will nearly always have enough power for the other miscellaneous parts (2-3 watts per RAM module, and the power usage of those has actually been going down, 10-15 for a hard drive, about the same value for an optical drive, I'm actually not sure what kind of draw SSDs are doing but it can't be much.. call it 80-100w worth, and that's a pretty generous margin.) So.. this system would run on a quality 500w supply, but it'll be doing it at a pretty high load on the PSU. 650w will have room to expand in the future if desired, such as updating to one of the really heavy-draw GPUs or going SLI, and will generally be running at the most efficient load level for the current system (for most PSUs this is between about 50 to 80% utilization,) which makes it the right choice. Going to higher wattage would not gain him anything useful, would cost him more, and might actually be a little harmful if the load level on the higher-rated PSU is low enough that it becomes less efficient, leading to higher energy costs and more effort expended by the system to cool the waste heat.