Advice on building a new PC

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I used to build my own PCs years ago - in the days of IDE and floppy drives. Last couple of PCs have been Dells off the shelf.

I now want a PC to act as a media server and have RAID to help recovery of my photos if the worst happens. I'm not a gamer, but the PC should be able to handle Photoshop or other image manipulation s/w

However I want to build one with the following spec

SSD Boot Disk such as http://www.expansys.com/d.aspx?i=174734
4 x 2TB HDDs such as http://www.kikatek.com/product_info.php?products_id=115720&source=froogle

Questions I have are what other components would you recommend for

case & power supply
mother board
processor
memory
video card
raid card

I assume the following come built into the mother board nowadays

network card
sound card
sata connections
usb connections

(if not what would you recommend)

Many thanks for advice.

Cheers
 
Whats your budget?

I gave up building PCs years ago. I cannot build a PC any cheaper (or quieter) than the manufacturers these days.

For server hardware, you can take a look at the Tranquil BBS. Stick your TB drives in it and you can have RAID or not on 3 or 4 drives (configured at time of ordering). Its a quiet system that you can run headless or not. It will have GigE networking, sound, 4xUSB2 and you can have esata all built in.
 
Advice on building a new PC...

Don't !

Honestly, I used to build my own. You could pick all the best components and you just knew it was constructed absolutely perfectly.

But for the last couple of machines I just haven't bothered. If you look at it logically, whatever you build is going to be superceded by something faster and cheaper in no time at all. You'll chuck you're latest machine in the nearest skip in maybe three years or so tops.

Don't bother, just buy one, use it, and throw it away when something better comes along.

I know it's not green, but b****r it, that's life.
 
Thought of looking into a NAS instead? You can use an old pc to set up a NAS quite simply running freenas and it should run a lot faster than a shop bought one. Maybe your current PC would be sufficient to run the NAS with a new PC running separately. Alternatively the NAS's sold today have green systems and turn off the drives when not in use so are [ahem] good for the environment.
 
case & power supply - Depends where it's going to be stored, i.e. does it have to be quiet?
mother board - Best you can afford
processor - Fastest quad core you can afford
memory - As much as the O/S will take
video card - Will it be used to display media files or just as a server?
raid card - Pass

I assume the following come built into the mother board nowadays

network card
sound card
sata connections
usb connection

All of the above come included on many boards, but as with the graphics card, you might want better sound if you intend to use it directly.
 
With the high cost of Windows now (£100+), you might as well buy a PC pre-built. You might save some cash getting a monitor seperately though.
 
chrisgeary said:
Whats your budget?

I gave up building PCs years ago. I cannot build a PC any cheaper (or quieter) than the manufacturers these days.

For server hardware, you can take a look at the Tranquil BBS. Stick your TB drives in it and you can have RAID or not on 3 or 4 drives (configured at time of ordering). Its a quiet system that you can run headless or not. It will have GigE networking, sound, 4xUSB2 and you can have esata all built in.
Click to expand...


Thanks Chris - budget is up to £900ish incl SSD and SATA HDDs. The server looks good - although my Linux skills are zero at the moment.

CGeezer - I have looked at a NAS before - the only problem I have is getting the data onto there seems to take absolutely ages - I know I can populate the disks via USB to start with - but then copying photos etc across - I'm not sure. Also I don't have a gigabit switch so that would have to change aswell I suppose. Might be a decent alternative.

Bill, Steep and alibiggs - good advice on getting pre-made PC - the only question is it would need to accomodate 4xHDDs and 1xSSD.

Thanks for your replies- I've got my brain working overtime now !!!
 
I still build my PCs because I am fussy about the components.
There are a few companies that will build to your specifications and having worked in the industry for over 10 years, I still wouldn't touch some motherboard manufacturers with a barepole.
If you go the Intel route you can use an Intel based chipset motherboard that had RAID built in.
Otherwise you could use something like a an Adaptec RAID card and performance wise it migh perform faster.
I loath the Nvidia Nforce chipsets when it comes to RAID, I've seen far too many corruptions with them.
I've used Intel chipsest based motherboards witih onbard RAID for years and I use RAID 1 (mirrored) without any issues except the occasional HDD failure.
Network card, sound card, sata connections and usb connections are all on board nowadays.
Motherboards I recomend are Asus and Gigabyte.
Intel is my choice for CPU so I would consider a quad core.
Graphics card well as long as it's a good company that produces the card, obviously either ATI or Nvidia chips.
Any PSU from £50+ is going to be good and case wise, find a decent one that will accomodate all the hardware with spare room for HDD's etc.

Personally I think this is the best way to go for the spec you want unless as I said above, you use a company that will build you a custom spec PC.
 
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