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CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-980 Processor

RAM: Corsair Vengeance™ DDR3 1600MHz 12GB CL9

MB: ASUS Rampage III Extreme, Socket-1366

Disks: 2 x Western Digital Caviar® Black 750GB

GPU: XFX Radeon HD 6950 2GB GDDR5 "Dual Fan"

Box: Fractal Design Arc Midi Tower Sort

PSU: Corsair HX 850W PSU

Also planning on adding a SSD sometime. This box is for Virtual machines, development and some games. If it were just gaming I would have had a quad core.

Typical scenario:

3 visual studio open (w. a good portion of extensions) 300-400 pr. process.

Different browsers, nowadays they eat up a lot of memory, regardless of brand.

Also data processing and correlation, scraping web and packing it into SQL.

I have not kept up on hardware lately, so what I am asking for is peer review that this is a sane build, and that all components should work together for good performance.

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This is classed as a "Shopping Reccomendation" question which is off-topic as per the FaQ. If you want to drop into Chat you might get some advice. Just one thing, though, how would you use the Cavair Blacks? Mirrored disks? – tombull89 Aug 13 '11 at 15:05
Mirror, was planning to have a 180GB SSD, but the price was too much, so temporarily I will use it for my OS. On another side, how do I ask a question like "Shopping Reccomendation"? Got kicked from stackoverflow over here, and now I'm kicked off here. – CS01 Aug 13 '11 at 15:42
how do I ask a question like "Shopping Reccomendation"?. On the Stack Exchange network, you don't. Otherwise we'd have a lot of "should I buy x motherboard" or "is graphics card x better than card y" clogging up. That's why I suggested chat, things are a bit more "loose" in the sense of site definition. – tombull89 Aug 13 '11 at 15:51
Alright. My problem is that there are way too many sites talking about hw, and I have a problem of finding out what is new vs soon old, vs old. So I have a problem educating me towards good hardware choices. – CS01 Aug 13 '11 at 15:56
The problem with hardware is it changes so fast. So you either have to buy, or don't buy. Don't worry too much about what's coming in the near future that might be better. However, when planning to build a computer, unless you happen to not care about the money, it is always best to go with the latest most cost-efficient hardware, as it allows you one, maybe two upgrades of major components in the future without having to do a full change on the MoBo, RAM type, etc. As far as where, chat.stackexchange.com is fine to ask these things, as pointed out. Always smart people online. – Paul Aug 13 '11 at 17:10
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closed as too localized by grawity, tombull89, Dave M, Sathya♦ Aug 13 '11 at 15:26

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Well, I have just put together and ordered my new rig yesterday, which I'll be using for Software & Web Development and Flight Simulator, so am fairly comfortable with answering this.

Your options work together and I see no reason why if you're comfortable with it that you shouldn't go that route.

However, you might take the following as advice. 1366 is coming up on its End of Life. I can't find anywhere were it mentions that your chosen MoBo supports Smart Response Technology (SRT = SSD caching). This will not allow your SSD to obtain optimum performance.

You might also be aware that the i7-980, although it has 6 cores, can be beaten by an overclocked i7-2600K (12,898 vs 10,252), which retails for about $275 cheaper and as an LGA1155 on a Z68 board is newer technology, you might want to think about this option because the overall cost is WAY lower than your current build, it does support SRT and you have upgrade options for the future instead of having on obsolete MoBo in 6 months.

So the bottom line here is really do you absolutely need the 6 cores to run concurrent tasking, or would for example, an i7-2600K overclocked to 5GHz with a water-cooled heatsink such as the Corsair H110 ($120) do the job as well, saving you money now and in the long run. If money is no object, then the short answer is your build should work as expected.

You might also read the last page of this review.

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Indeed. I built a 1366 a few years back, and while it was a solid build then, building on the 1366 platform is a poor decision currently, and not one I would recommend. I, too, highly recommend switching to 1155. – DeathMagus Aug 13 '11 at 15:27
Thanks, I will try build a rig on LGA1155. Again, hilariously off-topic according to the democracy here, any suggestions for what components would be a good fit for ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z, Socket-1155? This has nice 2 1gbit NIC (it has SRT). I think I will stick with the CPU, & Im not an overclocker. My older rigs was built and not much upgraded, apart from random SEAGATE disk crashes (which I have now banned), and the odd PSU dying. So maybe my Q is, can I use the existing parts for this new Mobo or does other fit better? – CS01 Aug 13 '11 at 15:47
i7-980 is LGA1366. If you build on an LGA1155 MoBo, your best choice is an i7-2600K as I said before. A good MoBo for that CPU is an Asus P8Z68 Deluxe, which features dual SATA 6GB/s, USB3.0, very good NIC, etc. All the other hardware is fine, you just need to choose between 17-980, which is 1366 or i7-2600K which is 1155. – Paul Aug 13 '11 at 17:22
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