A new build,opinons?

ignatzatsonic said:

Then you are pretty much set, assuming you want Intel and the 1366 socket.

SSDs give a very obvious bang, the shortcoming being price per GB.

You might want to run with the stock cooler and fans in the beginning. After you familiarize yourself with the the PC, you can consider overclocking and experiment with it while monitoring temps.

If temps go beyond your comfort zone, replace heatsink. If they don't, continue at stock.

Yup,hopefully:)
Thats the part i have to read up on lol.
I want the pc to be quick,but id like to see how the set up would run first before splashing out on an SSD:)

Thats the plan,seeing as the heatsinks and fans arent expensive i can upgrade as i go:)

bobkn said:

Minotar said:

Zidane24 said:

yes...the new X58 boards require triple channel RAM

Thank you:)

(snip)

Ill have a look at an AMD build,but i have heard good things about the i7 hence why i went Intel

My mainboard is an Asus P6T Deluxe (X58 chipset). If its manual is to be believed, it supports both dual and triple channel memory configurations. (I've only used triple channel, though.) Triple channel is to be preferred, but I believ that it's not required.

The Radeon HD4850 ought to give better performance at high resolutions than the 5750, at about the same price. The 4850 has a 256 bit path to its VRAM, while the 5750 has 128 bit. (The 4850 isn't a DX11 card, though.) The 4850 is the least expensive card in the 4800 series, which was the highest-end single GPU line of its generation for ATI. The 5800 series is the top line of the newer generation, and much more expensive. The 5700 family supports DX11, but it's more of a midrange series.

The Socket 1156 approach might be a good one, if you wish to go Intel and you're interested in saving some money. In the US, the I5 750 is about $89 less than the I7 920 (www.newegg.com), and P55 mainboards from the majors (Asus, Gigabyte) can be had for roughly $100 less than the least expensive X58 boards. Socket 1156 only includes dual channel memory support.

If you choose the I7 920, overclocking is common. I normally run mine at 3.8GHz, with a Thermalright Ultra 120 air cooler. I have the older stepping, and I believe that the newer one may do a little better.

The Antec 900 will accept large graphics cards, which makes it a good choice for a mid-tower. (You may have to remove an 80mm internal fan on the back of the drive cages; no great loss.) I still prefer to have the PSU at the top of the case, though; call me old-fashioned. I prefer larger cases like my current one, a Cooler Master Stacker 830, but it's a bit expensive. (Got it for about $175, including shipping. It's only the silver model, though.)

Thanks for the info:)
Would the i5 not be slower due to the 4mb as opossed to the i7's 8mb?

I think the i7 920 will do me perfectly,i have no need to run near 3.8Ghz,ill probably go as far as 3.2Ghz-3.4Ghz with a heatsink and fan once i have it for a while,but its great to know it can go that high,and i read on a few different forums some have had it as high as 4.0Ghz! I think thats astounding lol

The reason i chose the case was mainly due to the fact of price/practicality and looks.Have to admit,i really like it:)

I have recently built a similar 6GB i7 920 system with the antec 300 case and am very impressed with the performance

I went for the UD4P motherboard which i have found a bit temperamental for bios changes and overclocking but it does have the dual bios which is an excellent feature (if you enter wrong settings it defaults the bios back to copy of the 2nd bios) providing a bit of a fail safe and gigabyte are very good at releasing updated drivers/bios and offer three different ways off updating bios which takes away the risk of an error flashing the board.

The only thing i regret is not getting a SSD as everything else is so blistering fast the HDDs are definately the system bottleneck (and i got 2 in raid0)

The stock cooler on the i7 seems to perform reasonably well i played around with OCing to around 3/3.4 and found system temps fine although i did add additional fans cause my case only came with two so i added another two but often left the side panel off so this would have an effect (not sure how much)

Only thing worth noting is the i7 will only accept 1033 ram, i bought 1600 and had to OC in effect just to get it to run at stock speed, this is where i found bios to be temperamental as XMP profiles do not work, adjust profile to run at 1600 and by default it changes DRAM voltage etc as well and crashed system, but manual doing settings you should be ok, if your not familiar with OCing just take it slow and you should be fine

Also according to my MB manual the board can take any ram it says supports triple channel but can take any number of sticks 1-6 as long as you use the right slots.

Not much of a gfx/games man so cant really comment on that

Good luck on the build, hope you have as much fun as i did building mine :)

Frostmourne said:

So what have you decided Minotar? Blue or Red?

Blue seems too suit me better:)

Pauly said:

I have recently built a similar 6GB i7 920 system with the antec 300 case and am very impressed with the performance

I went for the UD4P motherboard which i have found a bit temperamental for bios changes and overclocking but it does have the dual bios which is an excellent feature (if you enter wrong settings it defaults the bios back to copy of the 2nd bios) providing a bit of a fail safe and gigabyte are very good at releasing updated drivers/bios and offer three different ways off updating bios which takes away the risk of an error flashing the board.

The only thing i regret is not getting a SSD as everything else is so blistering fast the HDDs are definately the system bottleneck (and i got 2 in raid0)

The stock cooler on the i7 seems to perform reasonably well i played around with OCing to around 3/3.4 and found system temps fine although i did add additional fans cause my case only came with two so i added another two but often left the side panel off so this would have an effect (not sure how much)

Only thing worth noting is the i7 will only accept 1033 ram, i bought 1600 and had to OC in effect just to get it to run at stock speed, this is where i found bios to be temperamental as XMP profiles do not work, adjust profile to run at 1600 and by default it changes DRAM voltage etc as well and crashed system, but manual doing settings you should be ok, if your not familiar with OCing just take it slow and you should be fine

Also according to my MB manual the board can take any ram it says supports triple channel but can take any number of sticks 1-6 as long as you use the right slots.

Not much of a gfx/games man so cant really comment on that

Good luck on the build, hope you have as much fun as i did building mine :)

Thanks for the info,appreciate it:)

bobkn said:

Minotar said:

(snip)

Thanks for the info:)
Would the i5 not be slower due to the 4mb as opossed to the i7's 8mb?

I think the i7 920 will do me perfectly,i have no need to run near 3.8Ghz,ill probably go as far as 3.2Ghz-3.4Ghz with a heatsink and fan once i have it for a while,but its great to know it can go that high,and i read on a few different forums some have had it as high as 4.0Ghz! I think thats astounding lol

The reason i chose the case was mainly due to the fact of price/practicality and looks.Have to admit,i really like it:)

4MB vs 8MB? I'm not sure what you mean. The I5 750 and I7 920 both seem to have 8MB of cache RAM.

I'm with you on the 920, but a socket 1156 system could save you about $200, with (I presume) a fairly trivial performance loss. I'm unsure what I would do at this time. The 1156 systems were not yet available when I did my latest build, one year ago.

Sorry, i was looking at a different i5
I still think the 1366 socket is what i want and offers the proccessors i want,but who knows,by the time i have the money together i might change my mind:)

Frostmourne said:

I'm still pushing Red - more bang for your buck.

LOL,i see you are.

As im saving up,cost isnt really an issue (i still wont spend massive money though) and the intel set up gives me what i want where as the AMD doesnt.

At the minute the things im thinking might change are
1156 socket -1366 socket
980 i7 - 920 i7
Whether or not to get an ssd
Watercooling,Fans

I still have to look up alot before i hand the money over but the basic set up,ill stick with it.