Sandy Bridge Buildup

[Lithiny]

Motherboard. All the goodies SLI..

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813157217

Proc, Unlocked multiplier. 4cores 8 threads.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819115070

Memory, sticking with gskill. The particular set isn't on the QVL, but the specs are the same. It's prolly the same chips, just different packaging.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231400

Video card GTX 570, pretty nice. could go with a 6950 or something, but I like Nvidia.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814133370

Power SUpply, 750w. modular. single rail, silver rated energy efficiency, pretty much the gold standard of kick ass for power supplys.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817139010

The rest is really subjective. I like antec cases, and OCZ SSD hard drives.

[Dystopium]

Very nice.

I am hoping to more to one of the new OCZ SSD drives or and OCZ revo in the rear future.

[Kickaha]

looks nice ,what about storage?.going with the stdrd hs and cooler?
At least 1156 hs attachment points are the same.
Intel seem to have given up on more than 2 memory controllers for now ,at least until some 1366 replacement arrives.
Would it be worth waiting for ivybridge or will that just be a die shrink with no extra features.
Mbrd looks well featured even tho its sold out ,are asrock good?,ive been using various gigabyte for like 8 years.

[Lithiny]

Yea using the ocz agility 2 typically. The asrock boards seem to be consistently on top of the performance charts. I don't use a ton of raid/usb/lan stuff. A couple 2.0 usb's and a spot for the hard drive and cd rom is good enough for me usually. Yea the 1155 socket is compatible with every 1366/1156 cooler out there. As far as waiting for ivy bridge, thats the game thats always played when building these things. Seems like as soon as you get it together it's out of date. The charts I've seen put the 2600k on par with the i7 extreme when over clocked. Which with an unlocked processor is very easy to do. I'm pretty ok with a 329 dollar processor out performing a 1000 dollar processor. I'm sure in some obscure category the extreme is faster. I play wow and surf the internet. Thats what this buildup focus's on. Side note the sandy bridge stuff is on a 32nm die. Which is what ivybridge will be on.

[Ffran]

ASRocks are pretty nice.

They are made by ASUS but stock they come overclocked.

so if you like ASUS you'll like ASRock you'll just need better heatsinks and fans

I think they are a little bit more expensive since they show better specs but if you dont know how to overclock your hardware safely it's worth the little extra fee.

[Kickaha]

well now that the p67 stuff is out there,from a WoW perspective,the i5 2500k and giga ud4/asus p8p67 or the asroc one seem to be the wtg.

an added bonus is (for WoW) the onchip gx seems to be sufficient to raid with according to tests.Things like mw2 black ops is a different story but if tight on cash,WoW on the skt 1155 i5 on a p67 board with no extra gx card for now seems to be a runner.
like if upgrading from skt 775 intel it looks the way to go,if u already have 1366 or 1156 i5 or i7 might be better to wait.
do get an i5 or i7 processor with "k"in the processor title tho.

[Lithiny]

just don't forget to use the onboard video you need a "H" chipset which does NOT support the unlocked multiplier. You can use a K chip, but you can't overclock it.

[Kickaha]

Yeh i checked back on the WoW test results..this was an actual review not some forum post!
The guy apologised he had no overclock results because the h67 board didnt allow it!

So the sandybridge sesame st letters for today are P for your motherboard and K for your cpu + a gx card..unless u wanna go cheapo.

[Houtoku]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGxMdwJ1 ... r_embedded

For anyone not as tech savvy as Kick/Lith/Dantep, decent enough explanation. And by decent I mean, I got it.

[Kickaha]

Yeh Hout,course Ben Kingsley is gonna be singing the corporate tune and Mr newegg is gonna be asking "how hard should I suck"

Did u get any of the items Lith?
Im thinking of going 2500k ,asus p8p67 pro( mainly cos gigabyte still havent implemented the new bios) and 2x4gb(probly gskill)
Just hoping for some small price drops in Feb once the hoop jumping dies down , and since im on lga 775 the cost/upgrade would be sufficient.


edit:
The only thing is we need to follow the trends
lga 775 lasted a long time.. comparatively and is still viable in the later chipset forms maybe 6 years
lga 1366 is still king with top of the line monster cpu's but that is gonna be a 2 year 6month lifespan approx .tho the stuff will still be good for another year after that.
say 3 years.
1156 i5 and i7 folks seem to have gotten the biggest shafting ,very short lifespan.. and dead now on a buy new basis.
sandy bridge vs ivybridge.. ivy bridge being 22nm chipset supposedly but still assuming 1155 32nm cpu's who knows but like I say for me 1155 might be worth the change.
it seems worth a go for a 775 upgrade,even tho like the 1156 its still limited to pcie 16
the 1366 replacement lga 2011 or whatever it is ,due this year might kill off any new 1366 sales and make price drops across the cpu ranges.hopefully tho when the i3 1155 stuff comes out next month i5 2500 n 2500K may drop or at least get as low as there gonna go for awhile.

its like waiting for the time to jump in!
Im not sure if these guys realise the games end is dying for pc's, consoles are going king. The need for max performance n gx is goin now to multimedia and that was allways macs area.
The pc was originally dragged up to mac gx level cos everyone needed the specs for gaming and everyone was buying the "cheaper" pc's.

Without WoW and its large customer base who knows what would be happening in pc land.A lot of the more recent releases are console ports!

[Houtoku]

Lith/Kick/whoever else knows their shit.. mind taking a look at the system I just put together over the course of this afternoon, any suggestions/alternatives/I fuck up any connections, etc welcome

CPU: Intel Core i7-2600K

Mobo: ASRock P67 Extreme6

GPU: EVGA SuperClocked GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2x 4GB)

PSU: CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-850HX 850W

Case: Cooler Master HAF 932 Blue Black Steel ATX Full Tower

My 2 big questions both relate to the GPU.

a) Think it's worth bothering with the GTX 560 Ti, or just drop the extra $50 and go for a $570?

b) If the GPU interface is listed PCI Express 2.0 x16, but the motherboard can only run single x16 or dual x8/x8, does that lock me out of SLI in the future if I decide to grab a 2nd card, since the individual PCI buses will be running in x8/x8 mode if I do? Or am I just totally freakin' missing something here?

3rd question - any recommendations on hard drives/drive configuration?

[Kickaha]

1.the cpu:
If its just for games or WoW id consider the i2500k.
differences are the the 2600k will run 8 threads (2 threads per core) which really isnt of any interest unless you do video and cine editing .
8 vs 6 l3 cache nothing much there either.

the cpu speeds are almost the same and in some reviews the 2500k has clocked more easily to higher speeds,if your interested in that.

the performance differences between the 2 cpu's at standard speeds in testing seem to be barely measureable and can be accounted for by the fact that the 2500k comes as standard at 3.3 ghz and the 2600k at 3.4Ghz.

Personally for the $100 price difference,(its actally more than that in europe,more like $130), ill be going for the 2500k.

2.
Mbrd, I dont really know much about it.like i said ill try the asus p8p67 pro,there seems to be a good customer base and its more readily available here.

3.
Gx card Im sure its good I havent read any reviews or the like since the 5 series came out but I doubt ,for WoW at least I would notice any difference between what I have now(460) and the 5xx.

4. Memory Gskill generally get good reviews:
and those have had some + responses and have nice timings.
Memory speed once again doesnt seem to be as much of an issue with 1155 ,unless running heavy video /cine work.

5. psu
most power u can afford and a good brand name cant hurt ,but the thing the psu suppliers arent going to be shouting about is that the 1155 stuff seems to be very low power consumption compared to a clocked 1366 setup.
A reason you might need that much power is if you were going for more than one gx card ,but since a single 560 is kind of expensive it might be awhile before u go for a 2-3 card setup..if the mbrd can take it.and if you really need more than 1 .

6.A case . well theres a lot out there,just make sure you like the look and that there is provision for at least one 120mm exhaust and one 120mm intake.
Im not a big fan of the mesh covers over drivebays akward to clean.
Nice looking case im not sure about big fans at the top of the case tho.
every time you turn the pc off dust is going to settle down thru there but main worry would be can of bud danger.. or coffee etc.
If you stand it on the floor or low down spills could get in.
If its on the desk ,well im allways putting mugs of coffe etc on top of mine(solid top) bad habit of course but just something to bear in mind.

You dont mention a cpu cooler ,but if you arent going for a hi overclock u may not need one.
the gx card if your monitor isnt at least 24in even the 560 might be overkill.
You using whatever keyboard n mouse u had before?
that mbrd has sata 3 connects yeh?
There are sata 3 ssd's around but they dont seem any better
Sometime soon there will be sandforce 2000 sata 3 solid state disc controllers coming out with data transfer rates around 500 mb sec read and write (bound to be expensive of course.
you could get a low capacity ssd like the ocz vertx 2 min 60gb id say for breathing room to have your os and perhaps WoW on and then say a 1tb for all normal storage.

Or get something like the 500gb hybrid drive,mentioned before which is faster than any normal hdd.

The pcie x16 limitation seems to be the same as 1156 stuff.
so your sli dual would be on 8x8 "they say" it doesnt make much difference and u still get a performance increase running 2x8
Its a chipset limitation.
There are more expensive p67 boards out there that quote pcie 1x16 1x16 and 1x8 like the gigabyte ud7 but apparently this is due to putting on some expansion chip on the board from nvidia and it ups the total cost a lot like up to 1366 board cost (native 2x 16 +).
Even with this chip apparently there is still a bottleneck.
So ive read anyway ;0.

[Lithiny]

Your list is exactly what I'm eyeing for my tax refund money. The only thing I'm kinda waiting on is the GTX560TI. On MSI's website there is a SOC (super over clocked) version listed as being available soon that is running at 1000mhz on the core right from the factory. The MSI with the Frozr cooling solution seems to be the way to go. There are some you tube videos of people running the 880mhz version up past 1000 and the cooler is nearly silent still. You could probably switch to the 750 watt power supply and get the Gold standard efficient one.

[Houtoku]

Kick, most of the reason some of my specs are a little higher than you'd expect is just because I tend to stick with the same comp for a while (case in point: current comp is 6 and a half years old and it's still running decently, just felt it's time to upgrade since it's starting to have trouble).

Current monitor is a 24" Samsung HDTV, plotting to get maybe a 30-32" sometime in the future, so I definitely like the HDMI output on the vidcard.


There might be a few compromises in the end, but using these specs as a base I think it should manage everything I throw at it.

[Kickaha]

The thing is are u a clocker or not :0

If not its a whole different picture.
if not u wont need a non intel cpu cooler,you wouldnt even need a "k" processor but for the few extra dollars the full overclock option is nice.
If you are and getting the asrock and dont mindflashing bios check this out.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/sho ... p?t=264748

Thats not to say other boards wont need bios updates as well, but for initial mass market releases there are allways some teething problems.
Thats actually one of the reasons I like gigabyte boards,they have dual bios if u mess the flashing up.
As I say tho gigabyte havent implemented the efi new look bios yet so ill try a change.

Ask yourself as well what benefits you will get from spending $100 on the 2600k will get you ,its not a q of spending the most cash on the cpu,their lifespans will be the same.
They will also be releasing "better" i5 and i7 1155 processors and as I said above I personally think the 3.3 or 3.4ghz is just marketing to make the standard 2600 look worth the extra cash in benchmarks.In say a year+ I would see the resale value of 2500k and 2600k cpu's being very similar so if you wanted to inject a little performance with a new cpu it would probably cost the same.

I upgraded from a q8200 to a q8400 cpu and it only cost me some $20 for instant 3.5up to 4 ghz cpu speed + virtual machine support.

My backup pc which is around the same vintage as yours ,mid 2005 manufacture could probably run WoW just fine ..it did before :0.i have it standard clock now tho and it would seem awfull slow overall.


lets just say 2 years into your new pc's lifespan
My pc now.. tho not as old as yours benches better than an i920 at standard clocks,obviously thats because ive clocked it up a lot.

Do get some kind of improved hdd the ssd is the greatest noticeable improvement ive had in like 3 years.
The momentus 500gb sounds like a great compromise while prices level out but i would see normal hdd going out of date in a year or so even if it is a stealthy diamond backed viper :0 at least for hi performance use.

If your not in a huge rush I would wait until mid month or check newegg deals,until the supply situation lvls out.
Ill hit the upgrade track in a week or so.

One good thing I did notice about the asrock board,from the linked thread, is it has mounting holes for a lga 775 cooler,which may or may not be relevant to you.
conversely the coolermaster v8 or v10 peltier cooler are very heavy mfo's with CoG up high in the cooler and if you inadvertently knocked over the case or were transporting the pc the strain on those mounting holes since the lga 1156/1155 ones are so close could cause a crack

My cooler came with an adapter for a 1366 cpu,which is different again ,but i thought I was future proofed a little (incorrect assumption).
there are rumors about pcie 3 next year and 32x2 lanes so if goin asrock:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813157222
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