Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Computer upgrade

10:07 PM / Technology / Comments5 Comments

Blu-ray

The new system I mentioned in my previous post is still several months from fruition, giving me plenty of time to research and change my mind, but at the moment, I'm looking at going for the following components:

  • CASE: Corsair Obsidian 800D
  • HEATSINK: Corsair H50 (a very nice-sounding and surprisingly affordable liquid cooling solution)
  • POWER SUPPLY: at least 750 watts (probably something from Corsair, modular if possible)
  • MOTHERBOARD: ASUS P6T SE (no need for bells and whistles, just a good rock solid ASUS board with an Intel X58 Express chipset)
  • CPU: Intel Core i7 (I'm looking at going for a 930 2.8GHz model and overclocking the hell out of it, which served me well with my 3 GHz Core 2 Duo)
  • MEMORY: either 6 GB or 12 GB of DDR3 RAM (probably something from Crucial, Corsair or OCZ - DDR3 memory must be installed in sets of three in order to work in triple channel mode, hence the slightly unusual amounts)
  • VIDEO CARD: ATI Radeon HD 5850 (the performance to price ratio for moving up to a 5870 isn't really worth it in my opinion)

Add to that my existing SSD, hard drives, optical drives and sound card, and I should have a very nice system that will be the envy of the neighbourhood... that is, if anyone in my neighbourhood cares about computers.

I tend to be fairly conservative when it comes to building systems, going with manufacturers whom I know from experience to be reliable and suited to my tastes and requirements - ASUS motherboards, Intel CPUs and chipsets, ATI video cards - but if anyone has any alternative suggestions, or wants to discuss anything about my proposed build, I'm more than happy to hear your thoughts.

 
5 Comments

1. Daniel Joseph Sardella said:

Unrelated to your computer upgrade, but I figured you would be interested or already knew...

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=72311
(May be region free! - i have US PS3)

I was planning on buying this one:
http://www.blue-underground.com/product.php?product=184

But, with all those extras on the Arrow edition, I'd like to see some image comparisons between the two versions first.

(Posted on Thursday, March 25, 2010 at 10:22 PM)

2. ChuckZ said:

The H70 is on its way. Hold off for that.

(Posted on Thursday, March 25, 2010 at 11:03 PM)

3. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Daniel:

Yeah, that does sound like an impressively feature-packed release. I've not seen any of Arrow's other BD releases, though, so I'm not sure what to expect quality-wise. I think I might wait this one out and see what the screen captures look like when they emerge.


Chuck:

Any idea when it's coming out? I've Googled for the H70, but so far all I've come across are rumours. I don't intend to start actually ordering the various component until the end of May at the earliest, but I don't really see myself waiting much beyond that.

(Posted on Friday, March 26, 2010 at 10:34 AM)

4. Steini said:

Do Arrow's Blu-ray releases of Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead look better than their Anchor Bay counterparts?

(Posted on Friday, March 26, 2010 at 4:27 PM)

5. Kentai said:

Arrow's two relevant BD releases are Romero's DAWN and DAY OF THE DEAD. Both were sourced from the Anchor Bay "Divimax" transfers, but in the case of Dawn they did their best to give it a fresh coat of digital grain and try to hide the fact that the master has little in the way of high frequency detail. Day is basically the AB master but with more extras and a nicer package.

Arrow made the mistake of posting early screen shots of their Dawn BD that were likely test encodes with different grain levels and color timing. It's all the crumby Divimax transfer in the end, but it got people's hopes up and made it look like they were trying to hide something. I don't really fault them for showing off a WIP, I just wish they'd been more clear about what it was at the time.

Good luck with the new build! I made a new system built around a Phenom II x4 myself last month. Only problem was I kept the same case from 6 years ago (NZXT Guardian), and this thing has all the proper ventilation of a sweatshop. I'm broke for the next couple weeks, so I'll just have to live with it idling at 45+ and spiking up to 60... AMD recommends 62 ss the highest "safe" temperature, so I can't do anythingthat accesses all 4 cores at once for more than a few minutes at a time.

(Posted on Friday, March 26, 2010 at 8:04 PM)

 
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