Getting a new rig

I have been planning to upgrade or getting a whole new system for awhile untill couple weeks ago i decided to sell my 3 years old rig with the following specs:

Old rig
==========
Intel Core Duo E6750@2.66GHz
Gigabyte P35-DS3 MB (faulty & replaced with MSI mATX board)
3GB of Kingston Value DDR2-SDRAM
HP w2207 Wide LCD monitor
NVIDIA GeForce G92 8800GTS 512MB
Seagate 160GB HDD & Hitachi 320GB HDD
Samsung 20x Dual layer Super-Writemaster
Creative SB X-FI XtremeGamer
Logitech z-5500 5.1 Speaker
Logitech Mx518

You could see the rig in the old thread here http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3389

I retained the sound card, speaker and mouse and to be used with my new pc. Some components i already ordered and some still in consideration:

New rig
==========

1) Still undecided:

Processor - Intel sandy bridge, maybe core i5-2500
Motherboard - sandy bridge p67, maybe Asrock m/b
Graphic Card - AMD 6970/6950 or nVidia 570


2) the rest (ordered):

8 GB Corsair 1333 DDR3 dual channnel
Corsair 600T casing
Corsair HX750 PSU
1TB Samsung Spinpoint
500GB Western Digital (re-use)
Dell U2311H LCD
22x LG DVD rewritable
Creative SB X-FI XtremeGamer(re-use)
Logitech z-5500 5.1 Speaker(re-use)
Logitech Mx518(re-use)

Any comments on processor, m/b and gc that i should get? i do gaming and movie watching quite equally, and very often multitaskings (downloading, playing music, and surfing)

You probably won't notice much difference between that and your old rig if you just replace the GPU on your old rig. Only certain CPU dependent games like Starcraft 2 are likely to be significantly faster.

However, it does look like a good selection if money is not your primary concern (and once SandyBridge is released). A few possibilities:

I would probably put a small SSD drive in there - the SF-1200 controller based drives have reached a very attractive price point and will boost load times significantly.

Maybe just pick up a 6850 card for graphics? The price on the 6850 is very attractive atm and as soon as you need more performance you can just pop a second one in which would be even faster than a 6950 (and probably almost the same price)

I considered to do some upgrades only to my old rig, but since my relative wanted an additional pc, i end up sold it to my relative at little over US 300 bucks plus old games & Windows Vista.

The SSD is very attractive but the price still expensive; i bought quite a lot of games on Steam and use up considered amount of space.

Dell U2311H LCD… awww. No 3D Vision for you.

SSD would be in addition to your 1TB drive. You can drop your OS on there and maybe one game where you want fast load times (like in an MMO, where you want to get back in FAST if you crash).

Hehe, my grandma has my old PC. An 8800GTX with 6 gig of RAM playing card games and Bejeweled - kinda makes me grit my teeth. Oh well, at least I get to go to work and complain about how my grandma has a better PC.

Nah…, not interested yet in 3d LCD. Maybe next time when the technology become more mature and cheaper.

Finally up and running as of last week:



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Final specs:
=======

Processor - Intel sandy bridge core i5-2500k
Motherboard - Asus p8p67
Graphic Card - nVidia 580
8 GB Corsair 1333 DDR3 dual channnel
Corsair 600T casing
Corsair HX750 PSU
1TB Samsung Spinpoint
Dell U2711
22x Samsung DVD rewritable
Creative SB X-FI XtremeGamer(re-use)
Logitech z-5500 5.1 Speaker(re-use)
Logitech Mx518(re-use)

Nice specs but playing DA2 on highest settings still gets me lag, as the 27" native resolution of 2560x1440 pull pretty heavily on my video card.

Nice rig.

Try out TuneUp 2011. It should help you disable a lot crap inside Windows 7, and its Turbo Mode shows you how much (or little) is possible without overclocking. The demo runs for two weeks.

edit: Other tools are more powerful, but TuneUp is very comfortable.

Originally Posted by Zloth
Dell U2311H LCD… awww. No 3D Vision for you.

Last time I checked ~6 months ago, 3D LCD computer monitors were still mediocre at best. Average 2D and below average 3D; that's not taking into account that the biggest panel size available @120Hz is 23".

Looks like a good rig. Noticed you have 8gb RAM though, which I presume to be 4x2gb. With an intel cpu and DDR3 RAM, you should be running in triple channel, not dual channel… so 3x2gb. Sorry to hear about your PSU problems, that must have sucked

If you ever decide to take the plunge with SSD, RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH. Some drives are notorious for inexplicable BSOD's. Case in point, I'll never buy anything besides RAM from Corsair ever again after I spent a month trying to wrestle with their shoddy firmware on the SSD Force series.

Originally Posted by Drithius
Noticed you have 8gb RAM though, which I presume to be 4x2gb. With an intel cpu and DDR3 RAM, you should be running in triple channel, not dual channel… so 3x2gb.

Triple channel is only supported by X58 chipsets. That means only socket 1366 cpu's, like Bloomfield and Gulftown, have triple channel support.
A sandy bridge processor (1155 socket), like I5-2500K, uses P67/H76 chipset. Only dual channel.
There will be a new chipset called Ivy Bridge, that I think will support triple channel. But that will be for Ivy Bridge CPUs, that haven't come out yet.
Anyway, from what I read triple channel is not so important.

If i was going to build a rig, I'd go for I5-2500K. Besides it can be highly overclocked.

Originally Posted by Von Paulus
Anyway, from what I read triple channel is not so important.

I agree. All the benchmarks I've seen didn't show much of a difference between dual and triple channel modes.

Heck.. I'm still using DDR2

Ah, my bad, sorry about that. That's one things I can't stand about the Intel architecture. It's just so damn confusing: various socket types and requisite motherboards + different capabilities for those sockets.

Not to mention the premium you end up paying over AMD counterparts.

Originally Posted by Drithius
Ah, my bad, sorry about that. That's one things I can't stand about the Intel architecture. It's just so damn confusing: various socket types and requisite motherboards + different capabilities for those sockets.

Not to mention the premium you end up paying over AMD counterparts.

It's not so bad once you enter to it. They are always changing the architecture, which has its own advantages.
As for the price, it's not the difference it used to be.

Originally Posted by Von Paulus
It's not so bad once you enter to it. They are always changing the architecture, which has its own advantages.
As for the price, it's not the difference it used to be.

It's an advantage if you enjoy changing your motherboard yearly. With an AMD processor upgrade, you swap it in and done. With Intel, get ready to spend 2-3x as much with a new motherboard and potentially new RAM. And pretty sure the price is still there, generally anyway: this last autumn, you could get a hexcore AMD chip for $200, Intel's was closer to $1,000.

I just gutted/rebuilt my computer a couple of months ago:

AMD Black 1090T
Gigabyte 890FXA-UD5 mainboard
Gigabyte GeForce 560Ti Video Adapter
G-Skill Ripjaws 2x4MB DDR3 1600 SDRAM

For about $200 more than what it costs for the Intel hexacore processor…

Originally Posted by Captain Buzzkill
Gigabyte GeForce 560Ti Video Adapter

Has the Geforce 560ti been out for 2 months already? You must have got it at release. Great card though.. as fast as my GTX 470, and you paid almost $100 less.

Pictures on my new desktop;

New & old computer boxes. The Z-5500 have been used for about 3 years now, very satisfied by it performance except the speaker's fuse easily get blown if you switch on and off power source frequently.


The Corsair 600T that housing my new hardwares, and the Dell U2711 with IPS panel which is very good for watching movie.


My desktop screenshot

Nice setup…

Heh.. I recognize your keyboard. That's a Logitech G15, right?

yeah it is; bought it 2 years ago but i haven't gotten to use its macro keys

I used to have the original G15 model that had 18 macro keys. It lasted me almost 3 years before I managed to break it. I never used the macro keys either.

Using a Saitek Cyborg now.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Has the Geforce 560ti been out for 2 months already? You must have got it at release. Great card though.. as fast as my GTX 470, and you paid almost $100 less.

It was actually the last piece I got, and I was able to pick it up for about $240. And, yes, it's a sweet, sweet card…