Building A New Rig

Discussion in 'Tech Talk' started by Alavander, Nov 9, 2010.

  1. Alavander
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    So yea, Its time to put a new computer together and I really need some help from people with up to date Tech expertise.

    My primary concerns are going to be...

    1. Futureproofing (As upgradable as possible)
    2. Price (800-1200$ Range)

    Secondary conerns are.....

    1. Speed (Gaming)
    2. Reliablity (Runs cool, no hardware conflicts)

    My first question is should I go ahead and build a computer this month, because of pre holiday deals(Black Friday, blah, blah)? Or is there new tech on the horizon for 2011 that will lower the price of components and offer parts I should hold out for.

    And here is what I am looking at

    Thermaltake Armor A60 Gaming Mid-Tower Case

    AMD Phenom™II X6 1055T Six-Core CPU w/ HyperTransport Technology

    Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 AMD 870/SB850 chipset DDR3 Ultra Durable™3 Socket AM3 ATX Mainboard w/ 7.1 Audio, GBLAN, Support 6-core CPU, CPU Auto Unlocker, USB3.0, SATA-III, RAID, 2 Gen2 PCIe, 2 PCIe X1, & 3 PCI

    NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB 16X PCIe

    8GB (2GBx4) DDR3/2000MHz Dual Channel Kingston Memory

    750 Watts - Corsair CMPSU-750TX 80 Plus Power Supply

    1TB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD (Single Hard Drive)
    (Looking into 120GB SSD if budget permits)

    And this setup I have here comes in at about 900$...so I have a little wiggle room for upgrades.

    I really need help with the Motherboard (Cause I have no clue what features to look for), cooling options (I would like to stay with air cooled), and I know most of the current graphic card options but need opinions on what is the most performance for the price.


    And a link to CyberPower configuration tool (even though I will probaly buy the components seperatly)

    Any help would be great.
    You can find me on Yahoo/MSN messenger at killamjl01@yahoo.com if you have time to have a quick chat about computer configuration.

    :punch:
     
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2010
  2. EniGmA1987
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    Next year both Intel and AMD both have very new technologies coming out so you might want to wait till then. Intel has "Sandy Bridge" and AMD has "Bulldozer"

    I have not heard about socket changes from AMD though, so I suppose Bulldozer will work on AM3 socket boards with an 8## chipset or higher with a bios update. So that board should be good.

    Next, do not waste money on a Sata 6gbps hard drive. Mechanical drives can no where near saturate a a Sata 3gbps connection so paying a premium for something even more unused is just wasting money.

    And finally, you can get some better Kingston brand DDR3-2333 memory for only a few dollars more than the Corsair DDR3-1600. So go with the higher speed stuff. You probably wont be able to run it at the full speed, but it will give you a lot more headroom if you overclock at all and you may find an option or two in the Bios to run at something higher than 1600, which if thats the case you will be able to take advantage of it. Now honestly RAM isnt really a bottleneck at even DDR1600, but in this case I would personally still get it since it isnt a complete waste as in the case of the hard drive, it CAN be taken advantage of slightly and who knows what kind of gains the extra bandwidth will give you when running 16 cores using a Bulldozer CPU.




    As a side note, my personal preference is to get another brand besides Gigabyte. I have used a Gigabyte motherboard now and then on computer projects every generation since Socket 939, for both Intel and AMD, and have not had a single Gigabyte motherboard that had good RAM capabilities. Every single board could barely run the RAM at spec in best case scenario, often having to downclock the RAM one speed grade in many cases. But that could just be my bad luck with their boards. Kinda odd since the memory controller has been inside the CPU for some time now rather than on the motherboard, but it just doesnt seem to work well with Gigabyte boards. Bios does have a lot to do with it though so thats probably why.
     
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2010
  3. Alavander
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    Thanx for the input. gonna update the RAM in my lineup =D

    More critque please:D
     
  4. Sogetsu
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    Yeah, I would just wait.

    Both nVidia and ATi are NOT done releasing their new lineup of cards, with December being the next time a release is suppose to happen.

    Also, it is rumored, as Enigma said, that Intel is releasing new chips next year.

    Play the waiting game, now is the perfect time to be doing so. I wish I would have waited building my new rig.

    The pre-holiday sales are teasing me as well, but I would wait if I were you.

    Consumer is going to win this year for once, at least in the gfx card market.
     
  5. FriendlyFire
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    I just bought a 6850 GFX card and I am also going to build a rig in the spring. I would wait as well because the price drop on these $189 performance cards are going to drop.


    ***I am going to Crossfire the 6850s
     
  6. EniGmA1987
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    Everyone knows "the waiting game" will go on forever and at some point you just have to go for it. But like we have all said, major advanced are coming within a years time. So really you should play the waiting for for now. At the very least wait till you see some great holiday deals and try to do some research as to what motherboard chipsets and models are most likely to be compatible with the Bulldozer core processors.



    Also I just remembered about the CPU. You really should try and get a "black edition" which has unlocked multipliers. AMD processors are greatly held back by the northbridge core speed, which has to do with L2, L3, and RAM latency. Overclocking just the northbridge alone can give up to 50% performance increases. Non black edition processors would be much harder to overclock easily for "OC newbies". Whichever way you go, try and get the northbridge to 3GHz or higher if possible. But dont raise the voltage on the nb to more than 1.3v probably or your risk damage in the long term.

    The price on the 1090T BE just dropped to $229 if you can afford it:
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103849

    Otherwise you might want to look at the X4 965 instead, a high end quad core is still pretty beastly in video games:
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103727



    Or next year when 8-16 cores are released. Here is just a taste from what John (a guy high up from AMD who I can talk to directly) has said about Bulldozer:

    Product Schedules – This is the most asked question that I get. Today we gave granularity down to the quarter. We expect to launch the client version of “Bulldozer” (code named “Zambezi”) in Q2 2011. The server products (“Interlagos” and “Valencia”) will first begin production in Q2 2011, and we expect to launch them in Q3 2011.

    Memory Throughput increase – We have talked about greater memory throughput for the newly redesigned memory controller, but today we put some numbers behind that statement. We are anticipating about a 50% increase in memory throughput with our new “Bulldozer” integrated memory controller. About 30% of that increase is from enhancements to the circuits and designs. The other 20% is from support of higher speed memory. I’ll leave memory speeds for launch, we need some secrets, right?

    C6 power state – Since Bulldozer is designed to fit into the same power/thermal envelope as our current AMD Opteron™ 6100/4100 series processors we obviously have some new power tricks up our sleeve. One of these is the new CC6 power state, which powers down an entire module when it is idle. That is just one of the new power innovations that you’ll see with Bulldozer-based processors.

    L2 and L3 cache – I have been saying for a long time that we would hold cache details until launch, but there were some compelling reasons to include this information in some of the compiler updates. Having the proper cache sizes helps in the optimization of applications, so we decided that helping our customers and ISV partners optimize ahead of the release outweighed the competitive concerns. Each module will have a massive 2MB L2 cache for the 2 integer cores to share and you’ll see an 8MB L3 cache shared per die (16MB on the 16-core “Interlagos” processor.)

    Turbo CORE – We have disclosed that we would include AMD Turbo CORE technology in the past, so this should not be a surprise to anyone. But what is news is the uplift – up to 500MHz with all cores fully utilized. Today’s implementations of boost technology can push up the clock speed of a couple of cores when the others are idle, but with our new version of Turbo CORE you’ll see full core boost, meaning an extra 500MHz across all 16 threads for most workloads.
     
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2010
  7. FriendlyFire
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    AMD is kicking the legs out from under Intel, at least from a price for performance stand point.
     
  8. Sogetsu
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    They usually have. ; )
    I'm still an Intel fanatic.

    Its weird, my first 3 computers I built were AMD / ATi, now my last 2 have been Intel / nVidia.

    Not that it matters - and I'm obviously not trying to prove a point.

    The waiting game is exactly what it states it is, a waiting game. I bought a lot of stuff for my current rig, waited like a year for deals, finally pulled the trigger and 5-6 days later some of the parts I bought got price drops.

    You never know when you will get a swift kick in the pants from the computer industry. Normally its soon though.
     
  9. EniGmA1987
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    I did a quick look into the new processors and it turns out that if you want the new CPU from AMD that will be released next year, it WILL require a new motherboard. They are NOT backwards compatible with AM3 boards. Thus if you build a computer now, the whole line is already nearing the end of its life. Thus your "futureproofing" goes out the window. The new socket is AM3+, and you will be able to get those motherboards around the release date for the new Bulldozer core.
     
    Last edited: Nov 12, 2010
  10. FriendlyFire
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    BUT.... The Black Edition 6 core processor for $200 is already out performing the $1000 Intel chips. What you just posted makes me think "HUGE DISCOUNTS!!!" Not "Oh noes a new CPU on the market /sadface."
     
  11. EniGmA1987
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    hahaha, ya but he wants future upgrade ability. So if someone were to build with an AMD system right now then there is no futureproofing :/ But still, very good performance for cheap either way.
     
  12. Krimzun
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    Not sure where you got your info but AMD's chips have been behind Intels for some time now. A few test linked here showing Intels low end i7 920 ahead of Amd's Black Edition. Now I know AMD has there Bulldozer line coming out next year but so does Intel with there new Sandy Bridge. In preperation for that Intel is only producing i7 950 and above chips now. While a 950 will set you back about $295 dollars vs the 1090T black edition. Its no where near 1k dollars like the 980x.

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/amds-sixcore-phenom-ii-x6-1090t-1055t-reviewed/5
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/amds-sixcore-phenom-ii-x6-1090t-1055t-reviewed/7

    Theres no real way to future proof at this point with both Intel/Amd changing to new sockets the AM3+ and the 1155. If your building a system now honestly CPU power is so far ahead of GPU power at this point. It doesn't realy matter as long as your able to afford the best video cards thats going to be your bottle neck for the foreseable future.
     
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2010
  13. EniGmA1987
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    CPU power ahead of GPU power? lol I dont think so man. Performance of PC components is rated in FLOPS, which is floating point operations per second. The theoretical limit of an i7 980x is 107.55 gigaFLOPS. Graphics cards are in the terraFLOPS.

    Single precision:
    Now if you go into double precision FLOPS it goes down a lot, but still way more powerful than a CPU:




    And as a side note, the ATI R800 core can reach speeds of up to 3.04 TFLOPS when clocked to 950MHz
     
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2010
  14. Vandiego
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    You're never really going to be future proof anymore. You may be safe for a year or so but much longer than that I don't see it. Let's also keep in mind, when you're upgrading a system, the last thing you really change out (at least in my opinion is your mobo) with the current stock of what is on the market, you can easily OC pretty much anything to 4ghz which in of itself is somewhat future proof for quite some time.

    Build a good rig with quality parts. OC the crap out of them. Keep your system clean and in a good environment and you'll easily get 3 years out of anything on the market right now.
     
  15. Alavander
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    Well heres the question. If i wait a year or so for the new mobo's and chips to come out. Will I still be able to stay in my 1200$ budget and purchase the new components?

    Or will I be hoping the price drops on the exsisting parts because of the newly released tech.

    Also what are the opinions on water cooled vs air cooled for overclocked systems.

    I prefer air cooled as I dont see a big enough advantage to pay premiums for water cooled + the upkeep of them
     
  16. EniGmA1987
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    Air cooling will get you far enough that it will do fine. Many CPUs out there will hit 4GHz on air cooling these days :)

    Honestly I dont know about price of new parts. None of that has been made official yet. What really sucks is that with that budget you cant afford a couple solid state drives, which is the largest performance boost you can get right now. I would recommend an 80+GB model for your OS (Windows can grow pretty big), and another drive for your most played games. Then have a 1TB (or more) mechanical drives for your other stuff. But the SSDs alone will run you $500 or more for two good ones of the right size.


    I do however highly recommend the OCZ RevoDrive, which is currently on sale for the 120GB model, only $10 more than the 80GB model. You might want to pick one of those up. Either to use as your OS drive (recommended) or exclusively for installing your favorite games to is up to you. But if you can afford that, it will be a huge upgrade to whatever computer you get no matter when you get it.
    The RevoDrive X2 just came out, which is why the first gen drives went on sale. However the performance of the first ones is still super amazing and the price of the X2's is really high. Thus I recommend a gen 1 RevoDrive.
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...227578&cm_re=RevoDrive-_-20-227-578-_-Product
     
  17. EniGmA1987
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  18. Vandiego
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    Your price point all depends on what you're recycling. If you're reusing your PSU or case, that will save you a significant amount.
     
  19. Vandiego
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    That revo drive is hot shit, I would add that to any build right now. Also, if you can recycle your current HDD and optical drive, that will allow you to trim even more off the top.

    The warranty on the PSU seems really low aren't most up to 100k hours now (11 years)?
     
  20. Vandiego
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    Slap a Noctua NHD14 on any CPU and you can overclock it to death.

    I went ahead and ordered the Revo as well, thanks for the heads up on the price drop.