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New PC / Upgrade
Hi All, long overdue PC upgrade
Currently i have the following
E8500, P5Q-Dlx, 8gb, 320gb sata2, dvdrw, hd4870, x-fi pci-e, 20" Dell TFT
This is what I am considering
I will be gaming/vmware workstation (2k8/2012 testing/studying etc..) - Diablo 3, BF3, Eve Online, Skyrim
I have the following already
HDD1: 180GB Intel SSD
GPU: HD6970
Sound: X-Fi PCI-E (from existing PC)
CPU: i7-3820 Retail
Mobo: Gigabyte X79-UD5
HDD2: Samsung 256GB SSD 830 Notebook/Apple Series SATA 6Gb/s KIT with Norton Ghost
HDD3: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD1002FAEX)
RAM: 2x Kingston HyperX Genesis 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual/Quad Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3K4/16GX)
Cooler: Corsair Hydro H100 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366/LGA2011/AM2/AM3) (CWCH100)
Case: Corsair Carbide 500R Midi Tower Case - Black
PSU: Corsair Professional Series HX1050 Professional Series 1050W Modular Power Supply (CMPSU-1050HXUK)
Optical: LG BH10LS38 10x BluRay-RW / 16 x DVD±RW Lightscribe Drive - Black (Retail)
Monitor: Dell UltraSharp U2412M 24" Widescreen LED Monitor - Midnight Grey
Total : £1,562.82
PSU is a case of buy it once and then it will last me down the line
I was considering IB cpu setup, but its either 16gb ram or a lot more cost on 32gb
anything else i should consider before i hit buy?
As an alternative, if I was to go for a i7 3770k instead, is my only limitation 16gb ram? also do all the motherboards for this socket have onboard video?
Thanks
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Re: New PC / Upgrade
That monitor, what is it costing you?
Because i would reccomend one of the Korean monitors i have one and am absolutely blown away by it
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Re: New PC / Upgrade
Do you really need to go X79? I think it would be better for you go to with an Ivy Bridge processor and a Z77 motherboard, it would cost a hell of a lot less than Sandy Bridge-E. If you do decide to go with Ivy Bridge, make sure you get a newer end graphics card other than the 6970. Limitation on RAM on Ivy Bridge is 32gb as you can get 8gb sticks and motherboards support 4 slots of them, and to answer your other question, no, not all motherboards have onboard video, it depends on what chipset you go for, although I would recommend going with the Z77 chipset, which DOES have onboard video.
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Re: New PC / Upgrade
How many VMs do you plan to run at a time? if it's for testing/studying it sounds like you'll probably only run a couple at a time? In which case it's quite possible that you won't need the extra memory bandwidth of the X79 setup. If you'd be running 4+ VMs, mission critical services, 24/7 then it might be worth X79 (but at that point it'd probably be worth going Xeon and having a proper workstation), but if you'll just be messing with them for a few hours at a time then turning them off you'll probably be OK with Z77.
As to onboard graphics, I know the earlier chipsets use to turn off the on-chip IGP when used with a discrete card, but I don't know if that's continued. Motherboards with Lucid's Virtu chip can, AFAIK, run both the IGP and a discrete card. Other boards you'd have to check individually. Most Z77 boards should have video outputs for the IGP, but it's always worth checking before you buy.
EDIT: Of course, the other option would be to have separate machines for the two tasks; buy a low-to-mid-range Xeon workstation for the VM stuff, and self build a lower-cost gaming machine or just upgrade the graphics in your existing machine, which is actually still a good gaming base. Could save you money and leave you with a more flexible setup...
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Re: New PC / Upgrade
Well i was looking to move from my existing VM machine to a single PC that could do both, I would just upgrade my VM machine, but typically when I have some funds, the tri channel kits don't exist or are very expensive now
My current VM machine is
i7 920
EX58-UD5
12GB (6x2gb)
I was thinking of upping it to 24gb as currently im running the following VMs
2x 2008 r2 DC's, Exchange 2010 server, RDS server, win 7 client, win 8 client
and the other night i set up 2x 2012 servers and started setting up an exchange 2013 server, but havent finished it
I also tried VDI in a box with several windows 7 clients etc..
Also have a PFsense router running to create multiple networks and give them internet access without messing with my home network
OCUK had 64gb kit on offer until today and it was much more than a 32gb kit
In the i7 920 machine, im using a 36gb raptor for additional memory for VM over commit, could change that to an SSD and see if i can find a cheaper 24gb kit, then I could look at a cheaper spec machine for gaming and the odd bit of vmware workstation as i could link it to my ESXI 5 machine
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Re: New PC / Upgrade
Definitely sounds to me like you should stick to having a dedicated VM machine if you run all those at the same time. the i7 920 is still a good CPU, so I'd be inclined to hunt out additional memory. You could always buy 3 dual channel 8GB kits (~£40 each) to get to your 24GB. An SSD (or several!) would definitely help - there's no comparison with HDDs when it comes to random access and running multiple VMs is - I'm pretty sure - going to hammer IO.
In your position, I'd cost up the upgrades you'll need to make to the VM machine to keep it running smoothly, then build a new gaming machine to fit into the remaining budget. You can get a lot of gaming muscle for ~ £500 nowadays, so focus on the more resource-intensive task first :)
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Re: New PC / Upgrade
Thanks Jim, IO wise it seems ok, I have a Perc 5i with 512mb & BBU, 4x 1TB Raid 10 for my VM storage, ESXI boots of a USB stick
Also have a single PCI-E GB nic for management and a single quad port PCI-E GB nic for the VM's
I am tempted to get a single 128GB SSD for OS installs and thin provision them and perhaps a 30GB SSD to replace the raptor
I'll look at the 3x dual kits, didn't think of it that way
Thanks
Andy