Buying new computer, advice needed

Comments

• DarkJedi007 Member Posts: 14

  October 2009

  I would definitely go with the 2nd setup. The 920 is an overclocking beast and from what I hear can easily go up to 3.4 and higher, you might need better cooling, but from what I hear air cooling should still be enough to push the 920 far beyond what it's rated for. From what I see you are getting a beefy heatsink so overclocking should be no problem for you. I'm not too familiar with the motherboards however, but most higher end motherboards should allow for overclocking pretty easily in terms of just being able to set the multiplier or boost the FSB.

  I would also go with the 5870 as that's the newer generation card with DX11 support and Eyefinity. The 295 is more powerful but also eats up far more energy than the 5870. If you're really keen on graphics muscle, then I would just crossfire the 5870 or maybe even wait for the 5870x2. I don't think it's worth it to get the 295 now considering that ATi just released very cost effective GPU solutions and nvidia is going to release it's gt300 line later this year.

  The Corsair is a very good choice for a power supply. I own the 650TX and I doubt it would fail me anytime soon. A nice but useless thing about the powersupply is that it's very nicely packaged and even comes with a carry bag. Why you would need a carrybag for a powersupply is completely beyond me however. Personally I think that modular power supplies are a gimmick. I just stuff all my unused wires into the empty drive bay above my DVD drive and the case is still very clean and doesn't block any airflow.

  As for the HDD, I've always been told to either go with Western Digital or Seagate. Seagate from what I understand is the more cost effective one. I personally have the 7200.11 1TB version and it works great. 1TB seems like an obscene amount of space, but I'm already have filled up so I'll probably need to get another one in the near future hahah.
• dfan Member Posts: 362

  October 2009

  2nd is clearly much better. lga 1156 stuff is still so expensive that it makes i7 much better.

   

  Few things:

  Pick a cheaper motherboard, pretty much every x58 board hits 210 blck, you won't need expensive one unless you want some die-hard overclocking (4,5 GHz).

  The case you picked is very noisy, antec 300 is much cheaper and still has sufficient air flow.

  Smaller psu will do fine, corsair hx 520 is a solid choice.

  Avoid seagate hdd's they had too many problems lately. Samsung F3 with 500 gig platters is pretty much fastest traditional hdd you can find, they are not pricey or noisy either.

  If your budget allows, consider getting a ssd for OS and game disk. These things are so much faster than old hdd's. Ocz vertex is a good choice.
• Quizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,507

  October 2009

  The processor heatsink/fan is massively overkill unless you're going to heavily overclock the processor, in which case you'll need a cooler like that.

  With a quad core processor and only one video card, Bloomfield (the latter processor) doesn't really offer any advantages over Lynnfield (the former).  Indeed, at stock speeds, a Core i7-860 (the next step up from the processor in your first setup) is quite a bit faster than a Core i7-920 (the processor in your second setup), while using less power.

  I'd also recommend going with the Radeon HD 5870 over the GeForce GTX 295.  They'll be pretty close on performance for games that are out, but the Radeon HD 5870 is a lot cheaper, will use a lot less power, won't give you the hassles that dual-GPU systems sometimes can, and will do a lot better on future DirectX 11 games--because it will be able to run them, among other things.

  What I'd recommend with your budget is to go with the former configuration, but get a Radeon HD 5870 and a Core i7-860 processor.  That would save you a bit of money while performing better.

  DarkJedi007 notes that Bloomfield processors overclock really well, but so do Lynnfield ones.

   
• Quizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,507

  October 2009

  Originally posted by dfan
  
  
  2nd is clearly much better. lga 1156 stuff is still so expensive that it makes i7 much better.
  

  
  
   

  No, actually, that's quite wrong.  LGA 1156 (Lynnfield) systems are considerably cheaper than LGA 1366 (Bloomfield) for a given level of performance.  The entire point of Lynnfield was to make them cheaper by stripping out the expensive excess bandwidth that would sit unused by >99% of the general public.

  For what it's worth, it would help if you say whether you're going to heavily overclock the processor, leave it at stock settings or what.  If you're going to leave it at stock settings, definitely go with a Lynnfield, as the much greater turbo boost will often get you half the benefit of a heavy overclock, without any of the drawbacks.  If you're going to overclock it, you'd have to disable turbo boost on either system.
• dfan Member Posts: 362

  October 2009

  Originally posted by Quizzical
  
  Originally posted by dfan
  
  
  2nd is clearly much better. lga 1156 stuff is still so expensive that it makes i7 much better.
  

  
  
   

  No, actually, that's quite wrong.  LGA 1156 (Lynnfield) systems are considerably cheaper than LGA 1366 (Bloomfield) for a given level of performance.  The entire point of Lynnfield was to make them cheaper by stripping out the expensive excess bandwidth that would sit unused by >99% of the general public.

  For what it's worth, it would help if you say whether you're going to heavily overclock the processor, leave it at stock settings or what.  If you're going to leave it at stock settings, definitely go with a Lynnfield, as the much greater turbo boost will often get you half the benefit of a heavy overclock, without any of the drawbacks.  If you're going to overclock it, you'd have to disable turbo boost on either system.

   

  I checked the prices a while ago, at least still they were kinda expensive, might have changed now tho.
• Quizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,507

  October 2009

  Comparing processors:

  Cheap Lynnfield:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115215 

  Cheap Bloomfield:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202

  Which of the two is faster will vary by program.  At stock speeds, the Core i5-750 will be faster than the Core i7-920 if your programs can only use one or two cores, they'll be about even at three or four threads, and the Core i7-920 will win handily for heavily threaded programs.  But at $200 for the Core i5-750 versus $280 for the Core i7-920, the latter should be faster nearly all of the time to be good value, not just a case of pros and cons.

  A better price comparison to the cheap Bloomfield is this one:

  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115214

  Intel actually sells the Core i7-920 and Core i7-860 for exactly the same price, but the Core i7-860 is quite a bit faster.  On a per core, per clock cycle basis, all Core i7 desktop processors are the same speed.  With all cores active, the Core i7-860 will turbo boost up to 2.93 GHz, while the Core i7-920 will only go to 2.8 GHz.  With only one core active, the Core i7-860 will run it at 3.46 GHz, while the Core i7-920 will only push it to 2.93 GHz.  Note also that the Core i7-920 is 130 W, while the Core i7-860 is only 95 W.

  Moving up the price scale:

  Expensive Lynnfield:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115213

  Expensive Bloomfield:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115211

  With all four cores active, they can both turbo boost up to 3.2 GHz.  With only one, the Core i7-870 will go to 3.6 GHz, while the Core i7-950 will only go to 3.33 GHz.  Again, the Core i7-870 does that on less power than the Core i7-950.

  So why would anyone get a Bloomfield?  There are several reasons.

  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115212

  That's one of them.  It's a lot faster than any Lynnfield, and a great overclocker, too.  Note the $1000 price tag.  Intel knows that they have the fastest desktop processor in existence, so they'll charge you an arm and a leg for it.

  Another is the purchase date.  For about 10 months, you could buy a Bloomfield, but not a Lynnfield, as they weren't out yet.  It's kind of like asking if the GeForce 8800 GTX is a good video card.  For early 2007, yes, it was a great card.  Buying a new one today doesn't make so much sense, though, in part because you can get the nearly identical GeForce GTS 250 for much cheaper.

  But the real point of the Bloomfield architecture is massive amounts of bandwidth.  If you want 3 or 4 GPUs in your computer, a Bloomfield motherboard will let you run them all at PCI-Express x8 or better, rather than having to throttle them down to x4 or worse as you'd have to do with a Lynnfield motherboard (due to the P55 chipset).

  If you need massive amounts of memory bandwidth, the X58 chipset for Bloomfield has triple channel memory, while the P55 chipset for Lynnfield only has dual channel memory.  I'm not aware of any programs other than benchmarks where the difference is noticeable, but they probably do exist.

  -----

  But the price of the processor isn't the whole story.  There's also the price of the motherboard to consider.  Intel charges $70 for the X58 chipset for a Bloomfield processor, compared to $40 for the P55 chipset for a Lynnfield.  Guess what motherboard manufacturers do with that cost?  They pass it on to you, of course.

  For the sake of an apples to apples comparison, let's restrict to ATX motherboards, rather than Micro ATX or other sizes.

  Bloomfield motherboards:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010200280%201070545356%201075707618&bop=And&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&ActiveSearchResult=True&Order=PRICE

  The cheapest one is $155, and that's perhaps skewed by sales on a select few cheap junk motherboards.  The fourth cheapest is $189.

  Lynnfield motherboards:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010200280+1070549182+1075707618&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&Subcategory=280&description=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=

  Five motherboards for $120 or less, and the median is only $170.

  Lynnfield motherboards also use quite a bit less power, and hence put out less heat, as the P55 chipset needs far less power than the X58.
• dfan Member Posts: 362

  October 2009

  All that is true, seems the prices have come down enough to justify i5 instead of i7.
  
  

  Originally posted by Quizzical
  
  
  
  But the real point of the Bloomfield architecture is massive amounts of bandwidth.  If you want 3 or 4 GPUs in your computer, a Bloomfield motherboard will let you run them all at PCI-Express x8 or better, rather than having to throttle them down to x4 or worse as you'd have to do with a Lynnfield motherboard (due to the P55 chipset).
  
  
  

  Actually it's due to cpu, the controller is inside it.
• Loke666 Member EpicPosts: 21,441

  October 2009

  First of all, don't get Vista. Just get W7 instead, vista will lower your performance a lot.

  Secondly, you really don't need the extra heatsink unluss you plan to overclock quite a bit. The intel processors since the the core2duo are very cool and you can actually clock them up quite a bit today with the original fan and sink.

  I prefer the first configuration myself.

  But you should consider skipping the harddrive and get a SSD instead, it will add a lot of speed. You can even get the ram down to DDR2 instead to free some money for it, this will give you a lot more while it will keep the computer cooler at the same time, and quiter.

  Here is my configuratrion BTW:

  Processor: Intel 2.66 Quad

  Motherboard: Asus P5T (or something like that, couldn't find a A-BIT card at any of my local stores and was in a hurry)

  Memory: 4Gb DDR2

  GFX card: GTX 295, Gigabyte

  Harddrive: 4 SSD in RAID 5. a Loose Seagate 1,5TB

  PSU: Corsair 750W

  Sound: Creative X-fire USB

  Currently run on XP but I will use Win7 soon.
• Quizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,507

  October 2009

  Originally posted by dfan
  
  
  Actually it's due to cpu, the controller is inside it.
  

  
  
   

  Kind of.  The PCI Express controller is on die for Lynnfield, but it's outside the processor and part of the chipset for Bloomfield.  But it's the difference between 22 PCI Express lanes and 36, or something like that.

  "You can even get the ram down to DDR2 instead to free some money for it"

  The Nehalem architecture needs DDR3 memory, not DDR2.  Besides, there isn't much of a price gap between DDR2 and DDR3.  If he wants to save money on memory, the thing to do is get slower and cheaper DDR3, rather than 1600 MHz CAS 7 memory.

  -----

  As for a solid state drive, someone looking at a 1 TB hard drive shouldn't plan on replacing that with a solid state drive unless he's got over $2000 to spend on it.  Getting a solid state drive in addition to a hard drive may make sense, though.  The main advantage of solid state drives is that they're really, really fast at random reads/writes.  Well, at least the good ones are fast at random writes; some aren't.  You can put the OS and applications on a solid state drive, and then pictures, music, videos and whatever else on a slower rotating platter hard drive where speed doesn't matter.

  If you go the solid state drive approach, either get an Intel X25-M second generation or an Indilinx-based one.  The former is faster, while the latter is cheaper per GB and still really fast.  Intel's first and second generation solid state drives are both X25-M, and both are typically still for sale.  One way to tell the difference is the part number at one point has a G1 for the first generation and a G2 for the second generation, while the rest of the part number is identical.  Another way is that the first generation is physically black, while the second generation is silver.

  Indilinx-based drives are made by a lot of different companies, as Indilinx only sells the drive controller.  At the moment, they include OCZ Vertex or Agility (but not Summit or Solid), Patriot Torqx (but not Torqx M28), G.Skill Falcon (but not any G.Skill drive that doesn't say Falcon somewhere), Corsair Extreme series (but not P series), Super-Talent UltraDrive ME (also renamed as UltraDrive GX), but not MasterDrive or various other letters, or Crucial M225.  Crucial and Intel are the only companies to make solid state drives without ever making some rather bad ones, though Corsair has discontinued the really awful JMicron drives they used to make, and OCZ is in the process of doing the same.  Both Corsair and OCZ still sell mediocre Samsung drives, though.  Note that OCZ tells you the real capacity of their drives, while the other companies play the usual hard drive manufacturer shenanigans of pretending that 1 GB is a billion bytes, not 2^30 as they'll use with memory, so that a 60 GB OCZ Vertex is physically identical to a 64 GB Indlinx drive from any of the other companies.

  Putting solid state drives in RAID is probably not the best idea for the moment, in part because raid controllers don't know what to do with them--and likely won't pass along the TRIM command when drives get the needed firmware updates for it shortly, hurting performance in Windows 7.  While it can be made to work, it's really better to just get one solid state drive with the capacity you need.  A 120 GB solid state drive is considerably faster than a 60 GB solid state drive in the same line, anyway.

   
• dfan Member Posts: 362

  October 2009

  Originally posted by Quizzical
  
  
  
  Putting solid state drives in RAID is probably not the best idea for the moment, in part because raid controllers don't know what to do with them--and likely won't pass along the TRIM command when drives get the needed firmware updates for it shortly, hurting performance in Windows 7.  While it can be made to work, it's really better to just get one solid state drive with the capacity you need.  A 120 GB solid state drive is considerably faster than a 60 GB solid state drive in the same line, anyway.
   
  

   

  Ocz has the garbage collection working, with raid also. The performance doesn't degrade at all when used.
• Quizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,507

  October 2009

  Originally posted by dfan 
  Ocz has the garbage collection working, with raid also. The performance doesn't degrade at all when used.
  

  
  
   

  Having to log out and leave the computer for a while to do garbage collector is a pain.  Having to manually run a wiper program is a pain.  Having data corruption if the computer goes into sleep mode at an inopportune time is worse than a pain.  TRIM is the way forward, and better than any of that.  RAID controllers will be TRIM compliant soon enough, but they're not there yet.  Someone who wants multiple solid state drives in RAID may wish to look into the OCZ Colossus or Z-drive when they come out, or Super-Talent's RAID drive.  Intel is working on something like that, too.  But for now, it's really too bleeding edge for the sort of person who has to ask for advice on what to get.
• Ginaz Member RarePosts: 2,572

  October 2009

  Ok, lol, 3rd option. I changed the case, dropped the heat sink (I'm not a big overclocker), and went with a smaller capacity HD to drop the price a bit so I could get a SSD:

  Processors (CPUs) Intel Core i7 920 Quad Core Processor LGA1366 2.66GHZ Bloomfield 8MB LGA1366 4.8GT/S 1 $342.16

  CPU Heatsinks Please Use The Heatsink Included with My CPU -NOT Available with OEM Processors 1 $0.00

  Motherboards ASUS P6T X58 ATX LGA1366 DDR3 3PCI-E16 PCI-E1 2PCI CrossFire SLI SATA2 GBLAN Motherboard 1 $319.99

  DDR3 Desktop Memory Corsair XMS3 TR3X6G1333C9 6GB DDR3 3X2GB DDR3-1333 CL 9-9-9-24 Core i7 Memory Kit 1 $164.41

  Video Cards Radeon HD 5870 850MHZ 1GB GDDR5 4.8GHZ PCI-E 2XDVI HDMI Display Port 1 $418.00

  Computer Cases Cooler Master Haf 932 Full Tower Black EATX Case 6X5.25 1X3.5 5X3.5INT No PSU USB eSATA 1394 Audio 1 $168.92

  Power Supplies Corsair TX750W 750W ATX 12V 60A 24PIN ATX Power Supply Active PFC 140MM Fan 1 $144.99

  Operating Systems Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64BIT OEM DVD with Windows 7 Upgrade Offer 1 $151.39

  Hard Drives Western Digital Caviar SE16 640GB SATA2 7200RPM 16MB Hard Drive OEM 3YR MFR Warranty 1 $82.99

  Solid State Drives - SSD OCZ Vertex 120GB 2.5IN SATA2 Solid State Disk Flash Drive SSD 1 $410.73

  Blu-Ray Drives LG CH08-LS10 Black BLU-RAY 8X Reader & 16X DVD Writer Combo Internal SATA Lightscribe Retail Box 1 $148.20

  Sound Cards Please Use The Onboard Sound Card Integrated On My Motherboard 1 $0.00

  Network Adapters Please Use The Onboard Network Ethernet Card Integrated On My Motherboard 1 $0.00

  Assembly Options PC Assembly and Testing with 1 Year Limited NCIX System Warranty (PRE-CONFIG WIN. OS If Purchased)
  
  Assembly and testing requires an additional 4-5 business days to ship your order once all parts are in stock. Does not include any water cooling or server CPU installation. 1 Year Limited Warranty on system components assembled by NCIX. 1 $50.00

  Warranty Options 1 Year Parts & 1 Year Labour Limited Warranty On System Components - Click for Details 1 $0.01

  
  
  Your Price:
  
  $2,401.80

  Theres also $65 in mail in rebates and extra savings thats not included in the overall price which would bring it down to $2336.80

  Thanks for all the advice and comments.  I'm leaning towards getting the SSD for my OS and the games I use most often and put everything else on the HD.  I don't have the 64 bit version of Vista so I'd like to get that and it comes with a "free" update option for Windows 7 as well.

  Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?

  Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
• Quizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,507

  October 2009

  The "free" upgrade option to Windows 7 really is essentially free.  Making a box that contains software costs next to nothing, so for Microsoft to give someone a copy of Vista and then a copy of Windows 7 to replace the copy of Vista costs essentially the same as just the copy of Vista.  As such, with Windows 7 close, they offer that if you buy a new computer now with Vista, they'll mail you Windows 7 for free once it's out.  I think you have to mail in some form, but that's it.  Microsoft does that because if people are inclined to buy a new computer with a legitimate copy of Windows now, they want you to do so and pay for it rather than waiting for Windows 7 and deciding not to buy it later once Windows 7 is out.  It's a perfectly good deal from your end.

  The Windows 7 upgrade is to the equivalent version of Windows 7 to the version of Vista you get.  That is, if you buy 32 bit Vista Home Premium, you get an upgrade to 32 bit Windows 7 Home Premium, or if you buy 64 bit Vista Professional, you get an upgrade to 64 bit Windows 7 Professional.  Getting 64 bit Home Premium is probably the best one for you, unless you have some compelling reason to get something else.  Once you get the upgraded version, you can upgrade without having to format the hard drive and start over.  There are advantages to a wipe and reinstall, but Vista is close enough to Windows 7 that you can get away with an upgrade in place.

  If you're not an overclocker and not going to add at least two more GPUs (i.e., add a Radeon HD 5870 X2 dual GPU card once it is out), I'd strongly recommend getting a Lynnfield system rather than a Bloomfield system.  That will let you have a faster computer for cheaper.  For a processor, get a Core i7-860 rather than a Core i7-920, and an equivalent motherboard will be a lot cheaper.  If you want the option to add a second video card for CrossFire later, then get a motherboard with two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots that can run them at x8/x8 rather than only x16/x4.  If you're not going to do that, then you can get a cheaper motherboard that doesn't have that option.  Note that you'll need to change the memory to get either 4 GB or 8 GB rather than 6 GB if you do this, though you could even upgrade to 8 GB and on net have a cheaper (and better) system than before.  In addition to being faster, the Core i7-860 puts out a lot less heat than the Core i7-920, so the stock cooler will handle it a lot better.  The P55 chipset for Lynnfield also puts out less heat than the X58 chipset for Bloomfield.
• dfan Member Posts: 362

  October 2009

  Save some extra by changing the psu to 500 watt model, there is no need for that high wattage, it only gives negative effect.
• Ginaz Member RarePosts: 2,572

  October 2009

  Quick questions. Am I able to take the hard drive thats in my computer now and put it in the new one I'll be getting and slave it? If so, will putting the OS on the SSD have any complications since the OS I'm getting is the 64 bit Vista (upgraded later to Win 7) and the one I have installed on my HD now is the 32 bit version? Thanks.

  Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?

  Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
• noquarter Member Posts: 1,170

  October 2009

  ---

  Originally posted by Ginaz
  Quick questions. Am I able to take the hard drive thats in my computer now and put it in the new one I'll be getting and slave it? If so, will putting the OS on the SSD have any complications since the OS I'm getting is the 64 bit Vista (upgraded later to Win 7) and the one I have installed on my HD now is the 32 bit version? Thanks.

  ---

  
  Yes you can put the old HD in there and use it as a secondary drive no problems. Whichever drive is selected in the BIOS as the first boot device is the one that gets looked at for an OS and whatever resides on the other drives matters not. All modern versions of Windows use NTFS for their file system so you'll be able to just put it in and still have all the old files on there.

  
  You would probably want to put it in then copy any data off it you want to keep (pictures, music, etc) to your other drive, then reformat it and copy the data back just to clean up the drive completely since it's just going to be a storage drive and you don't need the OS on there.
• madeux Member Posts: 1,786

  October 2009

  You're spending a ridiculous amount of money here, and you're not going to get any return on it.  At all.

  Now, if you're just got thousands of bucks to throw away, go right ahead.

  But if price vs performance matters at all to you, spending over $1200.00 is completely unnecessary.

   
• Ginaz Member RarePosts: 2,572

  October 2009

  Originally posted by madeux
  
  
  You're spending a ridiculous amount of money here, and you're not going to get any return on it.  At all.
  Now, if you're just got thousands of bucks to throw away, go right ahead.
  But if price vs performance matters at all to you, spending over $1200.00 is completely unnecessary.
   
  

   

  If you can find me a similar set up, with new, near top end parts, a SSD, a blu ray drive, available in Canada, and comes pre-assembled with the OS installed, updated and tested then please point it out.  I'm looking to build a computer that I won't have to do any significant upgrades to for the next few years and still be able to play any new game that comes out over that time.  I'm not looking at getting any kind of "return" on it.  And yes, I do have thousands of bucks to spend, which is why I'm going the direction I am.

  Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?

  Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.