Would anyone mind doing a system's check on my potential build?

[Websnom]

I'm looking to do a 10 drive build with the following parts. It's not only supposed to give me a little peace of mind for my digital hoarding disorder, but also to take over as my main means of downloading content.

 

Motherboard: ASRock P43DE3 LGA 775 Intel P43 ATX Intel Motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157174

CPU: Intel Celeron E3300 Wolfdale 2.5GHz 1MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor BX80571E3300

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116264

PSU: CORSAIR Builder Series CX430 CMPSU-430CX 430W

Case: COOLER MASTER Centurion 590 RC-590-KKN1-GP Black SECC / ABS ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

SATA Expansion Card: SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8 PCI Express x4 Low Profile SAS SAS RAID Controller

Hot Swap Drive Bays: Icy Dock MB455SPF-B 5 in 3 SATA I & II Hot-Swap Internal Backplane Raid Cage Module

Hard Drives: 2 TB Green drives

Budget: $650 (not including drives)

 

I'm buying everything so if anyone has a suggestion for a different piece of hardware I'm all for it. Also, I chose the dual core rather than the suggested AMD Sempron 140 because I had planned to do a pretty heavy amount of torrenting and creating .avi/.mkv files of my .iso collection. Would CPU make much difference or should I just add more RAM?

 

[kenoka]

Hi, and welcome. Here are my thoughts on your proposed system:

 

Motherboard: P43/P45 doesn't have onboard video. I'm not sure how it will run without a video card. You may need to go for a PCI video card to get it to boot.

 

CPU: meh.

 

Encoding work benefits from more cores and more grunt, but that just buys you time. A slow, single core system can do encoding; it's just slow. So it's up to you. That Celeron isn't exactly going to be a wiz at encoding either.

 

I'd either go totally budget, and stick with either a Sempron, or a low end dual core Athlon, which is still cheaper than that Celeron and probably outperforms it on encoding. LGA775 is on its last legs. I really wouldn't buy a system around it now. A similarly priced AMD AM3 based system will allow you to upgrade CPUs pretty easily, and also uses DDR3 RAM, which is dirt cheap at the moment, and will remain the standard for awhile.

 

If you want to stick to Intel and want to stick with your budget: I'd say go with an H55 based board and a Core i3, and ditch the hot swap bays. Dropping the two hot swap bays and going with the $20 CoolerMaster 4 in 3 cages would save you some money and get you a much more powerful system for encoding.

 

The best encoding machine you could get for your budget? Ditch the hot swap bays, and go with the fastest Phenom II you can afford plus an 880/890G based motherboard. AMD's chips do very well on encoding tasks. Dollar for dollar, they beat their Intel counterparts in this task. My older Phenom II 720BE does about 25% better fps than my brand new Core i3 540. Three real cores beats two hyper-threaded cores in this type of work. But the Core i3 is a triumph of efficiency, so it's in my HTPC, which does the bulk of the encoding. I've dropped from about 50-60 fps to about 30-45.

[Rajahal]

Interesting, kenoka, I didn't know that the Phenom IIs beat the i3 at video encoding.

 

Websnom: I agree with kenoka, you should choose a different motherboard, one with onboard video.  If you do go the i3 route, the GPU is integrated with the CPU, so the board essentially does have onboard video even though the specs will say that it doesn't (confusing, I know).

[kenoka]

Rajahal: Onchip video in the Core i series ONLY works if you buy an H55/H57 motherboard. If you get a P55 or X58, it's not supported.

 

I don't know how consistent the AMD vs. Intel thing is on video encoding, but I've certainly found it true on my systems. I think it's one task where real cores scale better than virtual cores. Since AMD doesn't (yet) do hyperthreading, you get more cores for the dollar.

 

You can get the Phenom II 940 for less than the Core i3 530. That should be faster than my 720, which is already pretty fast. But there's a significant penalty in power efficiency, as the 940 has a TDP of 125W, vs. less than 80W for the Core i3. I guess you could go with the 610e, which has a TDP of 45W, but that costs quite a bit more (about $140).

[Rajahal]

You are right, I should have specified about the H55/P55 distinction.

[Websnom]

thanks. glad I asked you all first.