Planning a new PC - Any advices / suggestions?

Hey guys, after the whole HDD issue, which i was able to backup the files, i'm starting to think about a new PC (My whole computer is very old).

Here's some of the specs i selected, and i wanted to have suggestions or advices from you.

CPU: Sandy Bridge Core i5 2500K 3.30GHz Quad-Core

Motherboard: Asus P8Z68-V Pro or Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 (both Z68 chipset, as i don't think it's worth going for P67 now that Z68 arrived)

RAM : 6GB Corsair DDR3 XMS3 1600MHz (Kit) (Corsair or Kingston?)

HD : 2TB Sata3 7200 RPM - Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 / Barracuda XT /

Videocard : GeforceGTX460 1GB GDDR5 256Bit or Radeon HD6850 1GB GDDR5 (need suggestions on models / brands)

PSU : 600W XFX (any other brands / models worth checking?)

So what do you think? Any modifications? Feel free to to post your opinions.

 

I don't keep up with computer specs but if your not doing heavy video editing or the latest blockbuster games which require a shitload of memory or the latest DirectX / openGL version support then there's no need to just run out and buy the latest powerful thing, it's just overkill and wasted money.
First think about the gpu and what you'd want it do then shape your cpu and motherboard around that and lastly your required ram.

 

nice build id swap the 460gtx out for a ati 6950 and boost that up to 8gb ram, out of experience id go with gigabyte boards i had so many issues with my asus i have currently. instead of a hybrid drive your best getting a ssd for your os and just a normal hdd for your files, cpu is good but im a amd man so id just get a x6 amd but its a good build still 750w corsair psu's are nice. what case you going to use?

 

Believe me, i'm not planning on getting the latest poweful thing. I don't even have money for that. I just want something that will last a long time (of course with upgrades now and then).

The Sandy Bridge (LGA1155) processor has great performance and lower consumption over the LGA1366. Plus i can get it for pratically the same price over any LGA 1156 processor.

The Z68 chipset mobo has the very best from both P67 and H67, and cost just a little more.

I went on the safe side by selecting the GTX460 or HD6850 video cards. The Ram will depend on price.

As for cases, i was thinking on a HAF922 or a Coolermaster CM690II Advanced. But i accept suggestions on this as well.

Thanks for the reply. The HD6950 costs almost twice the HD6850 around here, which is a lot. Anyway, i can go crazy on a videocard later on, but for now i prefer something with a better cost/benefit. The HD6850 costs pratically the exact same thing as the GTX460, and from what i read, has a lower power consumption. Still, i always preferred Nvidia on this, but to be honest i don't know which one is the best. (haven't followed this "battle" in the last two years)

Ram will depend on price, but any differences from Kingston or Corsair? XMS3 1600Mhz is worth it? SSD are still very expensive around here, so i'll have to pass it for now.

I have no preference on brand, AMD or Intel. My current PC is AMD. A X6 1100T costs about 75 dollars less than the Core I5 2500K, but i've been reading so many great stuff from the new sandy bridge technology. Still, i'll gonna read more about X6.

I was thinking on a HAF922 or a CM690II Advanced. But like i said, i need suggestions.

 

i love corsair and asus stuff so i may be a bit bias on some stuff, case recommendation would be corsair 600t or fractal designs stuff

 

About SSDs, they are not that expensive anymore. Last year I paid 260€ for 64GB, this year it was only 100€ for the same SSD but with newer generation chips and controller. The prices are dropping and I strongly suggest a SSD for the operating system, it is a great improvement in speed and you don't want to miss it anymore when you've worked with it.
For a 64-Bit Windows a 60/64GB SSD is big enough, the only thing you have to do is to disable the hibernation file and move the swap file to another drive, as they eat up a lot of space (2x the amount of installed RAM).

 

I checked the Corsair 600T as well. I'll look for reviews. Fractal Designs is new to me, don't remember seeing them on sale around here. Any model i should look for?

Well, around here they still cost a lot. I could get a 2TB Sata3 BarracudaXT HDD for the price of a 60GB SSD. I'll have to put SSD aside for now, maybe in next 6 months.

I've read about them being great for OS, plus i really liked the Intel Smart Response Technology on the Asus P8Z68-V Pro: http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z68V_PRO/


PS: It's worth getting 1600Mhz DDR3 ram or just the normal 1333Mhz ?

 

From what i've been reading, the i5 2500K is four core. I'm kinda lost now.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i5-2500-2400-2300_3.html
http://www.xbitlabs.com/picture/?src=/images/cpu/core-i5-2500-2400-2300/table2.png

As for Ram, again will depend on price. 2133 probably cost too much around here. I guess i'll start with the 1600 and then update later.

SSD are very expensive around here. There's no way i'll get one now.

I'll check the GTX560 for the price. The ati card you say is the HD 6850 i mentioned, right?

Using this site ( http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp ) i was able to check what PSU i should buy. I'll probably get one with at least Silver 80Plus certificate.

Anyway, for now i just want a new PC. So in the next 6 months i can go crazy on videocard, ram and ssd.

 

I have a i3-2100CPU which is x4 Core at 3.10Ghz each and only 2GB or memory and Intel on-board HD Graphics Chip yet it will run two HD videos at 1080p simultaneously, run Model 2 arcade games full speed, sort of run Model 3 at half speed and does everything I want it to do Video wise and audio wise with great speed. If you're not a PC gamer a rig like this is cheap and very practical. Suits me perfectly since I'm not, never have been and never will be a PC gamer.

yakumo

 

After some more reading, i pratically decided for a Core I5 2500K + that asus or gigabyte Z68 board. The new sandybridge processors are way more powerful than anything from AMD on the market right now. The new AMD processors to compete with sandybridge, a.k.a. "bulldozer", aren't available yet. I'll get an special cooler for the cpu so i can clock it on 4GHz.

On the videocard i'm leaning towards an Radeon HD6850, since it costs less than both GTX460 and GTX560 and has lower power consumption. Depending on the price i can try getting a HD6870. By the way how good are the drivers for these Radeon boards? It's been ages since i haven't used a videocard other than nvidia...

On the RAM area, i read a lot, including perfomance tests and for commom use (gaming, videos, and so on) a 4GB (2x2GB) dual channel 1600Mhz will do the job. Will look for prices on corsair, kingston and g.skill.

PSU will probably be a XFX 650W or maybe a 700W.

I'll get a new HDD as well, probably a 1TB SataIII SeagateBarracuda XT, and also keep my 2 current SataII HDDs

Still deciding on case, but i really liked the CM690 II Advanced. Great airflow, cable management space and price. Plus it's very dust protected. Still, give me suggestions on this. I'm looking for info and price on the ones Kevin wrote.

 

Right after you said it was 4 core i went to check it again. That's why i posted those links. I got confused for a bit

 

I got an i5 2500k and I can't reccomend it highly enough - even the onboard HD 3000 graphics is relatively amazing - it is so good I have been content to use it until I can afford to buy a GTX 560 Ti and as such I am in no rush. It can run the source based games @ 720p in high settings, but if you bump up the resolution or AA/AF the FPS takes a big hit and as for Fable III, I had to play that on low settings. Still - for onboard graphics it is pretty amazing and it will certainly tide anyone over a few pay days until they can afford a decent graphics card.

I also highly reccomend the Asus P8Z68-V motherboard too. I opted for the most basic version as for me the pro features were not worth the extra £18 (Dolby DTS 5.1 decoder, pointless for me as I use stereo headphones, 2 USB 3 ports to use the internal header, meh no need got no USB 3 devices and 2 ports on the back anyway and 2 more SATA ports, albeit on a lesser quality controller). There is a deluxe version too but for me personally I'd avoid it at all costs because the onboard GPU is disabled and for me, having it enabled is a must for two reasons: I don't have a GPU yet and when I do I will be wanting to use the Lucid Virtu iGPU mode to save on the electric bill.

As for SSD - I have got a 60Gb Agility 3. It is amazing... when it works. At first I was getting BSOD several times an hour, but I think most of that was due to the way I moved files and folders onto my HDD. Teething problems aside, it mostly runs fine now and is probably going to make the most noticeable performance boost in your system.

As for HDD I was incredibly fussy. I was only going to run one to save electric, but I didn't fancy paying for a raptor for a mere30MB/S more go. In the end I had to have at least 500Gb platters, 7200 RPM speed and 64Mb cache and I got that via a 1Tb Western Digital Caviar Black.

Several local friends and their families loved my PC so much they have copied me, though some have gone for the Pro motherboard for the pointless £18 extras and a different case, more annoyingly they can all afford to buy my planned GTX 560 Ti too but every single one of them loves it and I reccomend it too - you won't be dissappointed

 

Can we get an Assembler Steam group going?

 

Thanks for your comment LeGIt. I've been reading great stuff about the i5 2500k as well. I'll get it and overclock it to 4Ghz (of course i'll get a better and bigger CPU cooler). Motherboard will depend on price, but i prefer the Asus P8Z68-V Pro as well. Nothing against the other brands, but after reading a lot it has more features than the others. On GPU it will probably be a Radeon HD6850 or HD6870. I've been using GeForce for a long time (The last ATI i had was a Rage 128 Pro 32Mb ), but those new models cost more, use more power and the perfomance is very close.

The only real doubt i still have in on the RAM. I want a 1600Mhz but there's so many differences on CAS / latency. If anyone can help me on this, please post here. So far i've selected these 3 models, only one will be the bought:

Kingson HyperX PnP DDR3 1600 CL9 1.5V – 4GB (2x2GB) Model: KHX1600C9D3P1K2/4G
Corsair Vengeance Blue DDR3 1600 CL9 1.5V – 4GB (2x2GB) Model: CMZ4GX3M2A1600C9B
G.Skill [ RipjawsX ] DDR3 1600 CL9 ou CL8 1.5V - 4GB (2x2GB) Model: F3-12800CL8D-4GBXM

By the way is there any problem on using 1.65V Ram on sandybridge motherboards? I've been reading that Intel recommends 1.5V (like the ones i selected), but no one guarantess if there's an issue on 1.65V

 

I'm not too keen on your graphics card choice The GTX 560 Ti only pulls around 180W which isn't bad and the performance is good too. The only way you would beat the performance for similar money (albeit they cost more and not all can be modded) is to buy an AMD 6950 and BIOS hack it into a 6970, but then only nVidia has PhysX too so

As for RAM I have been using Corsair since they launched their TwinX packs way back when. I currently have 2x 4Gb Corsair Vengeance Blue @ 1600Mhz - the heat spreader is ROFL big but effective I haven't bothered to overclock much yet, but with the stock cooler using the Intel XMP profile I've got a quad-core system which is stable at 4.4Ghz. I think you're better off with 8Gb RAM in this day and age though. Finally I have no comment as to the effect at 1.65v as I wanted the Vengeance RAM which luck would have it is 1.5v anyway so

 

Close, its 4 full fledged cores with Hyper-threading that looks like an additional 4 cores to the OS. Hyper-threading more or less is the duplication of a CPU to an extent, the execution portion of one IIRC. For all intents and purposes Hyper-threading is just about useless.

That'd be neat.

 

The big problem is that i all GTX560 i checked prices costs between 180 and 200 Reais more than an HD6870. A GTX560ti gets even worse. Even if get less perfomance, in the end, i'm getting a full new pc. I can upgrade the GPU later on. And from what i read the only game that uses PhysX is MafiaII, which i don't care.

Thanks for the info. Well around here it's wise to get a better cooling solution for the CPU. The summer around here can get very warm. I even think on getting a liquid cooling solution later on.

 

Meh the ASSEMbler Steam group request is a little random here? No one mentioned Steam!

As for PhysX a fair few games use it, including the sexy Batman Arkham Asylum I got off Steam yesterday for £3.75

For what it's worth Johnny you may save money in the long run doing as I do - making do with the onboard graphics (which for onboard is amazing) until you can afford the GTX 560 Ti. I'm hoping to have mine within 4-5 weeks and my system has already been running for 5 weeks too. A total of 10 weeks of onboard may suck, but the HD 3000 is relatively special.

My 3 cheapie 140mm fans arrived today - one was a bit smashed around the frame but once it is screwed in it all works - for £2+ though it isn't worth kicking up a fuss given that it still functions. I've been running my system at a permanent 4.5Ghz for 24 hours now (none of that dropping back to 1.6Ghz nonsense ) and the new fans have taken 15c off my temps across the board, but they are loud which is NP as my TV is loud too so