X58 Mobo Required

[Andy_Carr]

Hi folks don't post that often but have been scouting around for the above and cannot make a decision.

I primarily watch a lot of HD, listen to music and play games on my PC and have never gone down the overclocking route but may take the plunge with the new rig. Audio playback must be as good as possible and using optical or co-ax as my amp's analogue inputs are used by my SACD/DVD-A player, Foxconn Rennaisance had crossed my mind but it appears the add on card only has analogue out. Does the Harp card have any effect on digital out or would it be wasted?

I'm set on the entry level i7 and probably the Thermaltake Element 6 case for cooling and believe it or not style. I have a 4870 and may add a second so well spaced slots come into the equation. I also have a PCI-e eSata card.

Memory will be 1600 but undecided on brand as trying to work the price.

May even head down the SSD route for OS drive so advice there would also be appreciated.

Hope some of you folks can help, love but hate upgrading.

Excitement and confusion



Current mobo is an Asus P5N-E SLI Plus which I've had issues with so Asus is a little out of sorts with me.

[Turbotab]

Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R around £160, according to the reviews it overclocks relly well, the dual bios feature is also useful. There is no native SLI support though, a cheeky BIOS flash could solve that!!

[Badbonji]

The UD3R officially supports SLi with the newer BIOS, and should allow for a considerable overclock like most X58 boards.
http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,198.0.html

As for memory I find G.Skill to be one of the most reliable, and overclock pretty well too. Can be had for £100 for 6Gb 1600Mhz roughly, varies by place.

[scaryjim]

Can I ask why you're set on i7 & DDR3-1600 for what is basically a run of the mill gaming PC? Given you already have a 4870, you could pick up an AM3 Phenom II X3, AM3 mobo, 4GB of DDR3 *and* another 4870 for about the same as the i7 920 + mobo + RAM. I'm pretty sure that would be a better use of the money, performance wise...

[Andy_Carr]

Cheers guys

Well SLI isnt part of the plan now but crossfire is and is supported by the Gigabyte. Will have to give that a bit more thought.

Scaryjim

Not really set a target money wise just know I want to get bang for buck not sure the Phenom stacks up against the i7's in any way shape or form if I have two 4870's anyway. Guess the money saving would be nice but I would be upgrading again before I know it.

Got me thinking though may just check out the AMD path.

[Turbotab]

For gaming an I7 is overkill atm, however if game developers start pushing for better multi-threading in their code, the I7 will destroy its competition, as it already does in those benchmarks which can utilise hyper-threading.
Intel have also suggested that current X58 boards will accept the upcoming 6-core Gulfstown CPU, though this has not been officially confirmed.

[Andy_Carr]

Thanks Turbo that's interesting about the upcoming cpu and yep I realise multi core processors aren't fully utilised yet.

Like I said earlier confusion reigns

[Turbotab]

Given that you can pick up a X58 MB for £ 160, 6 GB of DDR3 1333 for £63 and the I7 920 for £ 240 = £463.

A Q6600 with a good P45 MB and 4 GB of DDR2 1066 is around £280 to £300.
That is if you buy from Scan, other retailers are still charging over £160 for a Q6600!

The I7 will OC to between 3.8 - 4GHz on air, whereas most people won't get the Q6600 over 3.5GHz, on air at least. The Q6600 does not support SSE4, which is not a major factor at the moment, but could become more important for upcoming games.

The I7 will use more power at peak load, but will take less time to complete tasks, so even the total power used will probably be really close.

If you don't want to overclock, I'd say go for a higher GHz dual, like the E8500. However, if you want to OC and will keep the PC for a few years then spending £200 extra, will give better value.

[Andy_Carr]

Just thought I'd update you as I've now purchased my goodies

Gigabyte EX58-UD5
i7 920 stepping C0 unfortunately but o/c is not my main concern
6GB Corsair 1600C8
60GB OCZ Vertex Series SSD
2x640GB WD Caviar Black Editions
Antec 900-2
Zalman CNPS9900LED

Added to that will be my 1GB Sapphire HD4870, Seagate eSata 500GB, Samsung 500GB F1 and LG Blu-ray

I had already thought about just upping my E6600 to an E8500 but fancied the greater longevity of the i7 plus after reading about the new processors and the X58 possibly being able to handle thought I'd bite the bullet. Plus my Asus P5N E SLI Plus has been a royal pain in the ass.

Anyway thanks for your comments they did give me food for thought and helped in the final decision. I hope the mobo lives up to it's billing and that the audio quality is up to my current set up. The rest I confidently feel is more than up to the task of handling my usage.

[Hover_Donkey]

Can I ask, if sound quality is such a major concern, why you don't get a dedicated sound card?

Even though some on-board audio is OK or even pretty good, there's a definitie qualitative increase when adding a dedicated card.

[Badbonji]

The on board sound on my motherboard was pretty good in fact, for the time I couldn't fit my sound card in (had dual 8800gts 512mb - blocked off PCI) until I got my GTX295.

[sammorris]

If you're going for dual graphics, I'd recommend scaling back to a Core 2 system with X48 or buying a more expensive i7 board. The reason for this is that the slot spacing on all of Gigabyte's i7 boards is narrower than other boards, and as such cooling will be a big issue for the graphics cards. The best dual graphics boards for i7 are the DFIs and Biostar TPower. With two 4870s, the CPU overhead is quite significant, you will see a benefit using an i7 over a Core 2 or Phenom II.

[Andy_Carr]

Can I ask, if sound quality is such a major concern, why you don't get a dedicated sound card?

Even though some on-board audio is OK or even pretty good, there's a definitie qualitative increase when adding a dedicated card.

That is something I've thought long and hard about with the Asus cards but what has always held me back is that I don't utilise the analogue outputs. It appears that a lot of what you pay for goes into that area of the cards with replaceable opamps and the like. Therefore a waste of money.

My hifi amp does have analogue in but that is being used by my DVD-Audio and SACD player. I'm finding that the audio qulaity from the previous few mobo's has been excellent just don't want to go backwards. It is going through some reasonable hardware so it would be noticeable.

Sammorris I have alreday purchased and now built the above, the concern about the Giga mobo and Crossfire would be unfounded as in this case there's plenty of room and the cooling is fine with fans at the slowest settings.

Anyway back to completing my install and thanks all again for your comments.

[sammorris]

I'm surprised, as that's known to be a real issue with most 4870s. Perhaps the Gigabyte ones don't suffer. Typical load temps of fully-spaced 4870s are around 85-87C in Crossfire. With narrow spacing for the same fan speed they'e around 95-98C, or more typically, the fan speed is about 500-700rpm higher and the load temp is 90C or so.

[somebody]

Andy_Carr what OS are you gonna install on ur setup?

[Andy_Carr]

I have Vista x64 but will be looking at Windows 7 shortly