I did some research a month ago. Here's what I would have chosen then, if I had the money:
Box: Xigmatek Elysium Big Tower Black. Reason: Nice and roomy. PSU: Corsair AX 1200W PSU ATX 12V V2.31, 80 Plus Gold, Modular, 6x 6+2-pin PCIe, 16x SATA Reason: Modular and with lots of SATA contacts. You can't really have too much power. :-) Mobo: ASUS P9X79 Deluxe, Socket-2011 Reason: Has 6 GB/s SATA support and USB 3. Optimistic upgrade path. CPU: Intel® Core i7-3930K Processor Socket-LGA2011, Six Core, 3.2Ghz I will not attempt to rationalise this choice. :-) RAM: two sets of Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600MHz 32GB Kit w/4x8GB XMS3 DHX, CL10-10-10-27, for Intel P67/Z68 and X79,1.5v Reason: Has quad-channel architecture and reasonably priced vs. competition (at the moment...). Quad-channel chips at higher clock speeds are hard to come by over here at the moment. Videocard: ATI FirePro V5800 1GB GDDR5 PCI-Express 2.0, 2x Dual Link DVI, 128bit Reason: Looks like a card with a good performance vs. price ratio. System disk: Plextor SSD PX-256M2P 256GB 2.5" SATA 6 Gb/s (SATA3.0), 500MB/440MB/s read/write, Marvel, 70000IOPS Reason: There have been many reports about issues with the Sandforce controller/firmware in SSDs. It may have been resolved since I researched this, but at that moment a disk with a Marvel controller/firmware made more sense. Btw, the 6 Gb/s controller on the mobo is also by Marvel. Scratch disk: Corsair SSD Force Series GT 60GB SATA 6 Gb/s (SATA3.0), 555MB/495MB/s read/write, 80k IOPS (4k aligned) Reason: From previous experience it's a good idea to put temporary files from image editors, web browsers, etc. on a separate disk. Reducing fragmentation on system disk, for example. I would have migrated my data disks from the current computer. They consist of four 750 GB Server-edition disks in RAID 5. I read somewhere that the Intel X79 chipset disk controller is compatible with RAIDs created on ICH family controllers, enabling direct transfer of the whole RAID setup. :-) I'd also keep my screen(s). My main (calibrated) screen is a HP LP2475w, a 24" wide-screen IPS-based monitor with native resolution 1920x1200px. It's the best screen I've ever had, but it's CLW illuminated so I expect it to start ageing in a year or two. -- http://www.alunfoto.no/galleri/ http://alunfoto.blogspot.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
