New Build, suggestions?

[Hicks12]

Right basically, i have always planned on replacing my current rig when bulldozer was out and since it should be here next month (hope... all this waiting haha) so thought while i wait i may aswell start planning out the alternative Intel (i will go with what ever is best at the time as since ivy bridge? is out later 2011 i dont really want to wait that long, this year is when i need it ideally, correct me if im wrong on dates!).

So basically i have this currently

CPU: e8400 @ 3ghz/3.6ghz (when its a good day... motherboard is a BISH)
Motherboard: Asus p5n-d
Ram: 4gb ddr2
GPU: gtx460
PSU: Xclio greatpower 700w(solid beast, reliable with power usage so this wont bottle)
Case: Lian Li A70b modded a bit


Now i dont really fancy upgrading my gpu just yet, this 460 was a tie over for when the amd 7000 and nvidia 600 series come out (the 4870 died very quick after i got it.... lol). All i am looking to upgrade is the CPU/Motherboard/Ram.

I still have to look at my finances and what money i have stashed away but i believe a figure of £700 including gpu so since i want a decent gpu (not a middle gpu, i have had 8800gts 512/9800gtx/4850/460 so all middle cards really, i want a fairly substantial one for BF3 when the new series are out) i think setting aside £200-£250 is a good figure yes? So £450-£500 available for just the 3 components mentioned.

The most important thing for me this time is the motherboard, the last one i bought was the p5n-d and ive hated it ever since (worst motherboard ever..) it can hardly overclock and sometimes a stable overclock for say 2 weeks will then randomly die and force me back to stock, i managed 4ghz on my chip for 2 days! I have both the gpu and cpu under water (pretty high end setup if im honest) so overclocking potential on the board is very important for me.

I have had a look and so far ive come up with this:

CPU: Intel CPU Core i7 2600K - £237

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 - £101

Ram: G-Skill 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz -£40

CPU, i havent really followed intel while waiting for BD so does someone fancy telling me why an i7 is better than an i5? I can only see a 2mb difference in the cache, i will be looking at benches in a bit but i presume you lot will know more .

Motherboard, im not sure about all these different chipsets... h/p/q/z, confused on the advantages as all i recall was the p and h and one of them allowed the use of the built in gpu and one did not.
Any other alternatives that are better? the priority on the motherboard is:
1. Overclocking
2. Stability(regards to overclocking, want it to run fairly cool)
3. SSD support (have 2 ssds, 60gb sandforce boot drive corsair f60 and a 128gb crucial c300)
4.quick boot, maybe the new interface instead of bios?

Ram i think is good enough, might wait for it to hit £36 again but no rush as i will be buying all of this when BD is released (if BD is crap ).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would check the Hexus Build guide for some suggestions:

http://forums.hexus.net/pc-hardware/...er-2011-a.html

[MSIC]

I have had a look and so far ive come up with this:

CPU: Intel CPU Core i7 2600K - £237

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 - £101

Ram: G-Skill 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz -£40

That all looks good to me.

CPU, i havent really followed intel while waiting for BD so does someone fancy telling me why an i7 is better than an i5?

The only significant difference is that the i7 chip is the same as i5 but with Hyperthreading also, ie giving you 4 cores but 8 threads.

Motherboard, im not sure about all these different chipsets... h/p/q/z, confused on the advantages as all i recall was the p and h and one of them allowed the use of the built in gpu and one did not.

The Z68 chipset is the one to get - it gives you all the features of the H and the P series, plus a few extra few treats.
FYI your suggested board, like my new one, comes with Lucid Virtu software. Although a friend of mine pointed out that it is still a new and potentially flaky technology, the principle is that it uses the Intel GPU for low-power (ie Windows) environments, and then switches on the 'other' GPU when needed, saving power as needed.
I'm using it right now and can vouch that it works!

[Hicks12]

interesting, ive had a look at some benches and it is clear that hyperthreading can cause a big difference when doing tasks like compression and encryption, so much so that it makes the i7 almost top and the i5 is behind even an AMD x6 however in gaming there is no real difference.

My PC is being used for everything, gaming is obviously a big one but it will be used for my university work (only software coding, maybe some virtual machines and a fair amount of compression use etc) and some very brief use of CAD. Im yet to find a review that shows the result of overclocking the i5 part compared to the overclocked i7 (overclocking that looks insane in the benches!).

Now i know this is really down to my own opinion and POV but what would you guys recommend, the i5 or the i7? £70 in it, would £70 be justified or should i just take the i5 and overclock it like mad?.

Ah yes Cat i just looked at that, good thread and suprised i have somehow missed it! Seems you recommend this motherboard aswell so must have picked a fairly solid board this time. May get a new sound card aswell as this creative seems to have some problems as it will randomly send massive static (ear bleeding! however i use my AV receiver to do audio over hdmi and use the card just for my microphone, will decide when i get my new motherboard if onboard mic is good i wont bother).

@MSIC, that is very good news about the lucid software... been waiting for something like this to come into effect in the desktop world as ill be honest my desktop does spend ALOT of time idle so reducing that power usage would be excellent . Atleast it works , dont mind flaky software so long as MSI in the end fix them .

Pretty much sorted for my AMD alternative build then.... hmm this was to quick!

Side question, i recall that AMD BD will just be using AM3+ socket right? so the current 990(is it?) is the motherboard to get for BD? If so does anyone have some preliminary knowledge in regards to one fitting my requirements above. Would save me more time then when BD comes out, that is ofc if current overclocking performance on those boards on P2 chips is similar to BD

Thanks for the help guys!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

interesting, ive had a look at some benches and it is clear that hyperthreading can cause a big difference when doing tasks like compression and encryption, so much so that it makes the i7 almost top and the i5 is behind even an AMD x6 however in gaming there is no real difference.

My PC is being used for everything, gaming is obviously a big one but it will be used for my university work (only software coding, maybe some virtual machines and a fair amount of compression use etc) and some very brief use of CAD. Im yet to find a review that shows the result of overclocking the i5 part compared to the overclocked i7 (overclocking that looks insane in the benches!).

Now i know this is really down to my own opinion and POV but what would you guys recommend, the i5 or the i7? £70 in it, would £70 be justified or should i just take the i5 and overclock it like mad?.

I would go for the Core i7 myself however,if you don't need the IGP,Quick Sync or don't plan on overclocking I would get this CPU:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel...tio-80w-retail

It is basically a 3.2GHZ Core i7 with no IGP.

Ah yes Cat i just looked at that, good thread and suprised i have somehow missed it! Seems you recommend this motherboard aswell so must have picked a fairly solid board this time. May get a new sound card aswell as this creative seems to have some problems as it will randomly send massive static (ear bleeding! however i use my AV receiver to do audio over hdmi and use the card just for my microphone, will decide when i get my new motherboard if onboard mic is good i wont bother).

The Gigabyte motherboard I suggested is different:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...e-20-(x16)-atx

It seems to get good reviews.

There is also this similar motherboard which gets a good review from Hexus:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...e-20-(x16)-atx

The motherboard you mentioned won't be the best for overclocking due to the VRM section used.

TBH,I would get the MSI P67A-GD53 unless you really need the extra features of the Z68 chipset.

@MSIC, that is very good news about the lucid software... been waiting for something like this to come into effect in the desktop world as ill be honest my desktop does spend ALOT of time idle so reducing that power usage would be excellent . Atleast it works , dont mind flaky software so long as MSI in the end fix them .

Pretty much sorted for my AMD alternative build then.... hmm this was to quick!

The AMD HD6000 series has very low idle power consumption so TBH it is not really of much use IMHO outside a laptop or SFF PC. Your PSU efficiency at low load is more important IMHO.

Side question, i recall that AMD BD will just be using AM3+ socket right? so the current 990(is it?) is the motherboard to get for BD? If so does anyone have some preliminary knowledge in regards to one fitting my requirements above. Would save me more time then when BD comes out, that is ofc if current overclocking performance on those boards on P2 chips is similar to BD

Thanks for the help guys!

The 980G motherboards have not been released yet. Anyway,again the idle power consumption of the HD6000 is low so I would just get a 970 motherboard or a 990X or 990FX if you need multiple graphics card. BTW,many AMD 900 series motherboards have SLI now.

One of my mates is getting this motherboard:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-...e-20-(x16)-atx

It looks a decent motherboard of you don't need Crossfire or SLI.

[Hicks12]

I plan on overclocking a fair whack, my current water loop consists of:
1x RX360mm Radiator
1x RS240mm radiator
2x DDC pumps
1x dual bay res
1x supreme HF Cpu block
1x Supreme HF VGA block

So hoping to push it a fair amount . Dont need IGP but quicksync sounds like an interesting concept and with lack of overclocking id have to stick to the i5/7 k stuff.

Out of the two gigabyte boards you mentioned, i presume the -b3 is simply a revised revision? as its only £4 more. They look a lot better than the one i posted so id pay the extra £20 for just that lol! Compared to the MSi im not sure, it would be nice to have the extra features of the Z chipset and it looks like the cooling on the motherboard is more substantial on the gigabyte board.


Yeah i did forget how low idle power on amd cards were, never the less that 20w is still 20w saving and can help cancel out the extra power used by my two pumps which is about 20w total as well .

I would like to keep the option of crossfire/sli open really if its within budget (which it looks like ) i remember reading that amd finally got SLI so nice to see it come into affect fairly quick.

And i still cant believe i missed the codes of that motherboard compared to the one you mentioned, they all have so many characters its hard to keep track!.

Again thanks for the help!

[Hicks12]

sorry to bump this, think i need to add psu to the build aswell (can add to the original budget thats fine) as i believe one of my water pumps just blew up... pretty sure it wasnt the pumps fault (causes a whole system crash instantly, so i think power surge or something via psu... pump wont come back though, thankgod i have two lol!).

What are the recommendations for something to fit the system i hope to build? To have a better estimate take the gpu as being a 580/90 as thats what i hope (well performance wise ) i will have next year. I want something solid, i havent seen many 80 gold cert psu recently but it would be nice to have it (is it over rated? ) has to be modular as i hate extra cables (fully modular if possible), budget of ~£90 but id say cheaper is better if it doesnt skimp on things as i know PSU last many builds .

Im thinking i need 600-700w psu right? shame this one isnt modular http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=45780 seems a steal for gold

If i look for just say a bronze plus (mines only bronze!) then i guess this would be good?http://www.scan.co.uk/products/675w-...-quiet-fan-atx
TT make good power supplies? I will research that unit when i get back but it is a reasonable price, need to see what cables arent modular though


edit: oh i missed this one, http://www.ebuyer.com/269166-cougar-...ular-psu-gx600 ... never heard of the make?

[bibio]

Hi, if you look at CAT's link, P2, Cougar mentioned with Seasonic etc. So looks like a good maker ?

http://forums.hexus.net/pc-hardware/...end-units.html


Cheers BOB