Ok,
the old/new hardware lineup should be something like this:
Case CoolerMaster CM690 II Advanced € 89
PSU Corsair Enthusiast 850W, 80Plus € 102
CPU Intel i5 2500 € 169
RAM Ripjaws DDR3-1600 1,5V, 2X4Gb €96.5
Main HDD OCZ Vertex 2 SSD 120Gb € 168
Data HDD WD Caviar Green 2TB 64mb € 68
VGA ASUS ENGTX560 1Gb € 208, 40
It's € 900 without the mainboard, because the e-seller doesn't have in stock the Asus P8P67 Pro with the revised chipset; the board should go for another 150 euros, totaling around 1050 euros. And it lacks a good monitor, I was thinking about a 22' Samsung LCD, but can splurge 30 euros and convert to a LED one.
Suggestions?
L.
Windows 7 64 bits?
I can't hardly differ. I have the exact i5-2500+P8P67 combo.
seems good to me, if you're an Intel fan :)
Memory looks slow to me - its the slowest that the board will operate. I'd get at least DDR3 2000 memory and, if the money is tight, just get 4 GB at this time. Memory will be your bottleneck with the proposed setup, it seems to me.
Quote from: grumbler on March 15, 2011, 06:09:07 AM
Memory looks slow to me - its the slowest that the board will operate. I'd get at least DDR3 2000 memory and, if the money is tight, just get 4 GB at this time. Memory will be your bottleneck with the proposed setup, it seems to me.
yes, it's the slowest, but after reading several online tests and reviews, it seems a voltage of 1.5 is the best advised (and I haven't seriously searched for DDR3 2000 low voltage DIMMs, and that particular mobo-cpu combo does not gain significant advantages from higher RAM clock speeds.
I will be doing some casual gaming (no FPS, no graphic intensive games), and lots of photo (and some video) editing.
L.
Why no FPS?
My rig can run Crysis2 on max no problem with a video card much less powerfull.
Quote from: grumbler on March 15, 2011, 06:09:07 AM
Memory looks slow to me - its the slowest that the board will operate. I'd get at least DDR3 2000 memory and, if the money is tight, just get 4 GB at this time. Memory will be your bottleneck with the proposed setup, it seems to me.
There ain't much difference between 1600 and 2000.
Quote from: Pedrito on March 15, 2011, 09:40:31 AM
yes, it's the slowest, but after reading several online tests and reviews, it seems a voltage of 1.5 is the best advised (and I haven't seriously searched for DDR3 2000 low voltage DIMMs, and that particular mobo-cpu combo does not gain significant advantages from higher RAM clock speeds.
I will be doing some casual gaming (no FPS, no graphic intensive games), and lots of photo (and some video) editing.
L.
The mobo-CPU combo doesn't take advantage of the higher speeds because of the mobo fuckup, but you will want to track this when the board is re-issued. As it was, the board was slower than clock at every memory speed.
Quote from: grumbler on March 15, 2011, 11:56:07 AM
Quote from: Pedrito on March 15, 2011, 09:40:31 AM
yes, it's the slowest, but after reading several online tests and reviews, it seems a voltage of 1.5 is the best advised (and I haven't seriously searched for DDR3 2000 low voltage DIMMs, and that particular mobo-cpu combo does not gain significant advantages from higher RAM clock speeds.
I will be doing some casual gaming (no FPS, no graphic intensive games), and lots of photo (and some video) editing.
L.
The mobo-CPU combo doesn't take advantage of the higher speeds because of the mobo fuckup, but you will want to track this when the board is re-issued. As it was, the board was slower than clock at every memory speed.
:thumbsup:
L.
It seems the only motherboard now available is the AsRock P67 Extreme 4, does anyone know anything about this brand?
L.
Asus got the replacement for their P67 chips.
Unless you have really funky electrical currents, the PSU seems like overkill if you aren't running SLI or Crossfire solutions.
:hmm: Considering I won't do SLI/crossfire, do you think it woulkd be sensible to trim the PSU to 700 watt? Or even :gasp: 650W?
L.
Quote from: Pedrito on March 25, 2011, 08:13:03 AM
:hmm: Considering I won't do SLI/crossfire, do you think it woulkd be sensible to trim the PSU to 700 watt? Or even :gasp: 650W?
L.
Even with SLI/Crossfire, a good 700w would be sufficient. If you plan going TRI-SLI/TRI-Crossfire at some point, you could still upgrade the power supply then. I'm assuming you don't want to got that way in 6months-1yr time.
Ok, other questions:
what's the quality of the heat fans that come boxed with the cpu? I doubt I'll ever perform any kind of cpu overclock, but never say never; should I invest in a third-party cpu fan, and what's the correct price for a medium quality one?
L.
I always found them to be of sufficient quality.
Quote from: Pedrito on March 25, 2011, 11:06:30 AM
Ok, other questions:
what's the quality of the heat fans that come boxed with the cpu? I doubt I'll ever perform any kind of cpu overclock, but never say never; should I invest in a third-party cpu fan, and what's the correct price for a medium quality one?
L.
I always found them to be crappy.
(nod to GreyFox ;) )
You need to replace them every year or so because they make noise.
Get a good Zalman fan, you'll be good for life with this.
HA! Finally did it; I was forced to use two different retailers because of short supplies.
The final lineup:
Case: CoolerMaster CM 690 II Advanced
PSU: Corsair Enthusiast Series TX750 V2 750W 80Plus Bronze
Main Board: ASRock 1155 P67 Extreme4 B3 ATX
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3Ghz 6MB 1155 boxed (with the crappy original fan)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Blue CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B 1600MHz 8GB (2x4GB
OS HDD: OCZ Vertex 2 120GB
Data HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green 1.5TB 3.5" Intellipower 64MB SATA2
Video Card: Asus ENGTX460 DirectCU/G/2DI/1GD5 GeForce GTx 460 Core 675MHz Memory GDDR5 3600MHz
OS: Win 7 Home Premium 64bit
All of this comes at around €1100. Seems a fair price :cool:
Now I have another 200 euros to spend on a new monitor and maybe a fan for the cpu.
L.
let me know how you like the cpu as same one i'm gonna grab.
Goods will be delivered saturday or monday, assembling will be made during the following weekend, I think.
In case of anything malfunctioning, voodoo dolls and sharp needles for every contributor to this (and the older) thread are ready.
I'll let you know about any issues I'll stumble upon, it's several years since I assembled my last PC.
L.
My replacement board is stock in the UPS system.
Damn it. I hate when companies use UPS. It sucks!
Yeah i dont' have the free time to build the pc till like easter, so content to wait to for newegg to have the mobo i want in stock. :lol:
And GF i'm having to use UPS as Fedex wants twice the money for same delivery speed.
It's all paid by Asus but it's still annoying as hell.
Case, motherboard and CPU arrived today!
..the remaining material is yet to be sent :mad:
L.
Quote from: Pedrito on April 05, 2011, 07:50:07 AM
Case, motherboard and CPU arrived today!
..the remaining material is yet to be sent :mad:
L.
katmai probably got them.
Quote from: Norgy on April 07, 2011, 10:38:28 AM
Quote from: Pedrito on April 05, 2011, 07:50:07 AM
Case, motherboard and CPU arrived today!
..the remaining material is yet to be sent :mad:
L.
katmai probably got them.
Considering the quality of local delivery services, it's more than possible :D
Nah, the pieces arrived this morning, all seems in order, tonight or maybe tomorrow I'll start assembling it.
I still need:
a crappy DVD writer (i could cannibalize my old pc);
a good monitor (didn't want to e-buy it before having seen some different models live in some hardware store);
and the 3rd-party cpu fan is still under scrutiny: first I'll try the OEM one; if it's noisy, or not efficient, I'll probably go for a Corsair A50. My main concern is the height of the thing, I suspect I'll have to precisely calculate the millimeters of case clearance :hmm:
L.
assembled everything last night, it seems I did not fry anything, it works like a charm :yeah:
Although, while clamping the cpu down, it made a horrible cringing noise that made me fear I beheaded all the 1155 pins.
Installed only win7 by now, I'll keep you posted about any issues I'll get while installing BIOS updates, drivers etc.
The SSD works wonders, from bootup to ready for work it seems there are about 15-20 seconds. SuperVanilla Windows only installed, though, no other apps.
I am happy :cool:
L.
:thumbsup:
I forgot: at the first boot, the monitor remained black and the pc was rather noisy, I was WTF because one of the reasons to upgrade was to get rid of my old guinea pig-propelled and extremely noisy pc.
Checked everyting, and the noise was coming from the video card fan. I powered only one of the two ports I found on the vid card, because there were no instructions about it in the box, and because I thought I've read the two plugs were to be used in case of SLI.
Not true, or maybe not completely true: after having powered the second plug too, it started working, and it got very silent. :whew:
L.
I know this seems redundant, but reading the manual sometimes actually helps. :secret:
Quote from: Pedrito on April 09, 2011, 05:18:52 AM
I forgot: at the first boot, the monitor remained black and the pc was rather noisy, I was WTF because one of the reasons to upgrade was to get rid of my old guinea pig-propelled and extremely noisy pc.
Checked everyting, and the noise was coming from the video card fan. I powered only one of the two ports I found on the vid card, because there were no instructions about it in the box, and because I thought I've read the two plugs were to be used in case of SLI.
Not true, or maybe not completely true: after having powered the second plug too, it started working, and it got very silent. :whew:
L.
:contract:
I've spent half of the evening reading manuals, in fact it all went hunky dory :showoff:
L.
I have a problem with the front Usb 3.0 panel that came with the motherboard; it works only at times, sometimes it seems it conflicts with the wireless LAN receiver, that is an USB (2.0) one. I'll explore the matter in more detail.
Installed the XFAST Usb utility by ASRock, they promise it speeds up both usb 2.0 and 3.0 transfer rates, but it's stopping my mouse from working, so I've uninstalled it.
L.
:hmm:
Driver/BIOS update?
It seems an issue of the USB 2.0/3.0 chipset drivers (Etron for the 3.0, dunno for the 2.0), they're working on it.
I think I've the last BIOS update, or at least I had it up to two days ago: I'll check for new updates
L.
Update for Kat:
The machine is a beast, I did not overclock it yet, but it's performing exceptionally well nonetheless. Not playing FPSs, but all the games I tried now run at max settings without an itch: Starcraft 2, Civ V, Dragon Age I. Running at 1280X1024 on my old monitor though: when I'll change it, I'll post here the performance.
I heartily recommend getting a SSD drive for OS and main applications, it's really another world of speed :cool:
The PC is extremely silent, so much that sometimes I forget to turn it off when I go to sleep.
Overall I'm very satisfied :showoff:
L.
Hit the post button too early :blush:
The 2500k has turbo boost and "overclocks" itself by a few hundred mHz when needed.
I broke down and bought a Sabertooth P67 and an i7-2600k. It's a beast. The real amazement, apart from synthetic tests placing it neck to neck with the i7-980X in terms of performance (the price gap between them is a Ford vs a Lamborghini), is temperature-wise. The i7-950 runs hot and the X58 motherboard runs hot even in an Antec 1200. This does not. I have set the fans to silent and added an aftermarket cpu cooler and it's a breezy 10 degrees above ambient when idling and Prime95 stress testing led to the cores reaching 60 C, or 40 above ambient.
I see no need for the "enthusiast" Sandy Bridge coming out this Q4 when the 2500 and 2600 processor really offer almost unlimited potential due to their low wattage and energy efficiency. Right now, the main bottleneck for more FPS is my GTX 580, which is overclocked. And since I don't play FPS games much, I really don't care. The DirectX 11 title Shogun 2 does stress the card quite a bit with max settings. :Embarrass:
Just ordered me a AMD X6 with 6GB Ram and a Raedon 5670 from Dell for 600 bucks. Hopefully it'll last 3-4 years like my old quad core did. If I don't have to upgrade anything in it like the last one, I'll be happy.
HD 5670 seems a tad weak for 3D gaming but more than enough for most other graphic stuff. Like HD porn. Upgrading it to a cheap HD 6870 would give you reasonable 3D performance at a pleasant price.
Quote from: Norgy on June 12, 2011, 08:52:27 AM
HD 5670 seems a tad weak for 3D gaming but more than enough for most other graphic stuff. Like HD porn. Upgrading it to a cheap HD 6870 would give you reasonable 3D performance at a pleasant price.
They way I was figuring it was it'll allow me to annoy people in Team Fortress 2 and at least play Shogun. Plus, for 600 bucks? I had to jump on that.
Oh boy. I get to play follow the Fed Ex tracker for 3 days. :w00t:
Is your package signed in?
Quote from: Norgy on June 15, 2011, 12:43:44 PM
Is your package signed in?
Yeah, I'll have to sign for it.
Quote from: Ed Anger on June 11, 2011, 08:52:47 AM
Just ordered me a AMD X6 with 6GB Ram and a Raedon 5670 from Dell for 600 bucks. Hopefully it'll last 3-4 years like my old quad core did. If I don't have to upgrade anything in it like the last one, I'll be happy.
:cool: I've got an AMD x6 also. It rules. I have 8 Gb and a 5770 in it.... more than sufficient for anything out there I'd want to play right now.
QuoteJun 16, 2011 1:39 AM
Departed FedEx location
FORT WORTH, TX
WILL YOU NOT ARRIVE AT THE NEXT HUB? :lol:
Its on the truck! WOOHOO!
Oh my.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mdjunction.com%2Fcomponents%2Fcom_joomlaboard%2Fuploaded%2Fimages%2Fdrool-a4b6fb43806a885d27960ef4fe27d6c8.gif&hash=7247893615271e9d1d13c61ec819739ac90d9c28)
It's time to retire the laptop that I've had as my main computer since 2004. I'm living in a small apartment, and will be moving a couple of times in the next year, so it would make sense to replace it with another laptop. But I've looked at some of those, and they're all either ugly or Macs. Plus, I would like to get back into some flight simming, and get myself a hotas and a head tracking thing, and that doesn't seem like it would harmonize well with a laptop.
I will be using it for gaming, programming, and general internet stuff. It should be quiet and not garish, since it will be sitting in the living room all the time, and I'm not too worried about budget. I'm not interested in building one myself.
This is what a local computer place is offering as its middle-tier gaming sytem, for 26000 crowns after tax (1060 Euros):
Motherboard: Intel P67
Processor: INTEL CORE i5 2500K-3.3 GHz
Hard Drive 1: 1TB SATA 6Gb / s. 7200rpm
Hard Drive 2: 128 gigabytes SATA SSD
Memory: 8 gigabytes of DDR3 1600MHz Kingston HyperX Grey
Video Card: ASUS Nvidia Overclock Edition GTX560TI DirectCU-II, 1 gigabyte
Sound Card: Integrated. Definition Audio Codec 7.1
Burner: DVD-RW.
Power: FORTRON 550W.
Case: FRACTAL DEFINE R3.
Software : Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit GB
Or for 820 Euros they have:
Motherboard: 790FX + SB750
Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 3.21 GHz
Hard Drive: 1TB SATA 3Gb / s. 7200rpm
Memory: 8GB DDR3 1600MHz
Graphics Card: nVidia GTX 560 DirectCU Ti-II 1GB of GDDR5
Sound Card: Integrated. HD Audio Codec 1.7
Burner: DVD-RW
Power: FORTRON 550W
Case: Coolmaster Elite 330
Software: Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit GB
(They're on the page here: http://www.mironet.cz/pocitace/tiche-pocitace-mironet/herni-graficke+c16685/)
I'm tempted by the top one. I don't know much about computer hardware, but I looked up reviews of some of the parts and they seem ok. It has a charmingly featureless looking case; on the other hand "overclock edition" is disconcerting. I would appreciate any advice on what to go for. :bowler:
Those aren't the names of the motherboards, just the type of socket they have.
The first one should perform better, particularly for gaming. The 2500k is great for gaming and the SSD should also speed things up.
The 550W power supply might be a bit low if you want to add a second graphics card in the future.
I built my pc a few months ago. I bought all the parts from this german site:
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/home.jsp?lid=2
The PC configurator section on the site is handy for picking the parts you need and will only show components that are compatible with each other.
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/pcconfigurator.jsp?pcConfigurator.step.1=1
They offer to build the PC for about 25 Euros extra.
I would recommend at least looking into picking the individual components yourself but it does take more time.
Thanks for looking it over - it sounds like you think it's a decent spec. The motherboard is listed as ASUS P8P67-M PRO REV 3.0.
I'm not likely to add a second card; rather, I'm worried that the computer might be noisy as it is. But this shop makes a point of saying that they make quiet computers.
Pishtaco, the first configuration you posted resembles very much the pc I built three months ago; I'm very happy about it: excellent performance and extremely quiet. The P8P67 Pro was a candidate for my pc, and I read positive reviews about it; the only reason I didn't get that board is it wasn't available at the time of my order.
L.
Quote from: Pedrito on September 01, 2011, 08:19:56 AM
Pishtaco, the first configuration you posted resembles very much the pc I built three months ago; I'm very happy about it: excellent performance and extremely quiet. The P8P67 Pro was a candidate for my pc, and I read positive reviews about it; the only reason I didn't get that board is it wasn't available at the time of my order.
L.
It got delivered last week. I'm not entirely happy with it. It's noisier than I would like when idle - it's only a low hum and a woosh of air, but I'm used to a nearly silent laptop. I made it a bit quieter by turning down the CPU and chassis fan in the bios, but it seems like the PSU fan always runs at full speed. The case, which looks nicely understated in pictures, turns out to have a glaring blue light on the front that flashes when it's sleeping. I will probably replace the PSU and unplug the light, but it looks like opening the case will void my warranty with the shop. The SSD doesn't make it as snappy as I imagined, and coming to windows 7 from windows 95-themed XP is a shock.
However, it's doing a good job running games, and is even relatively quiet while doing it (except for a weird whine at the Crysis menu screens).