New build questions

[Qabouter]

Hello,

I am looking at a new build and did some browsing of the current tech. But I am left with some questions to which I cannot easily find the answer.

To start there is the motherboard. Basically there is a choice for H67, P67 or Z68 boards. What I gather is that H67 is optimized for using the on-board vidcard for 2D video and the addon heavy duty card for 3D games. Then the P67 does not have that, but is well equipped for overclocking your hardware. And the Z68 has both, but comes with a higher price-tag. Is there anything I am missing here?

For the processor I want to go Intel i5 or i7. I was thinking of i5 2500, perhaps the K version, price doesn't differ that much.

Next I saw a lot of fuss about SSDs, the main disadvantage there is the limited amount of cycles before you get data corruption. What I don't get a clear picture of, is how long will it take for the SSD to wear out?

Next item is the vid-card. The version numbers and additions are dazzling. You got some that are factory overclocked settings, and those that are lighter versions. I myself was considering a GTX560 Ti, but I was wondering if that was an overclocked version of the 560? It it not entirely clear what makes it perform so much better than the original 560?

For the fans I summarize what I was looking at so far:

Case: Cooler Master Sileo500
Motherboard : Asus P8Z68 Deluxe or Sabretooth P67
Processor : Intel I5 2500 (or K)
Memory : Corsair vengeance 16GB 12800 , 1600MHz, kit of 4
Vidcard : Asus GTX560 Ti DCII
PSU : OCZ ModXtream Pro 500W

Then there is the drives. Obviously a DVD drive of some sort. And for HDD I was looking at WD Caviar series 750GB or 1T, but I might swap around some from my old PC, since HDDs are now quite expensive. I was looking at the alternative of an SSD for running operating system and basic applications like office, Adobe CS5...

Any thoughts or advice is welcome!

Oh yeah some things to take into account,
I have a single 1920x1080 monitor, that is not going to change any time soon. So any advice with reasoning "you can easily run 10000x6000 resolutions on this rig" or "can support 2 monitors at that resolution" pointless....
Also I am not comfortable overclocking so: "This overclokcs much better than what you got there!" not constructive advice for me.
And I use cheap ass headphones, therefore I just use on-board sound card, if you have any reasoning for a not too expensive sound card addition I am open to suggestions. Although in the past I had nothing but grief with conflicts between a (BIOS diabled!!!) onboard card, a discrete card AND HD audio on the vidcard (for some obscure reason).

Budget around 1000 euro, and I am situated in the netherlands. My experience is that budget advice is generally not very useful, since price range and availability differ so much per location that what gives the best bang for the buck in UK or US does not hold true over here. That is an evaluation I have to make by myself.

[ShyguyXPC]

To start there is the motherboard. Basically there is a choice for H67, P67 or Z68 boards. What I gather is that H67 is optimized for using the on-board vidcard for 2D video and the addon heavy duty card for 3D games. Then the P67 does not have that, but is well equipped for overclocking your hardware. And the Z68 has both, but comes with a higher price-tag. Is there anything I am missing here?

More or less. H61/H67 are the budget platform, allowing you to use the CPU's integrated Graphics for 2D OR 3D.

ANY of the boards will allow use of Dedicated Graphics cards.


Z68 is NOT higher in price, at least when compared to P67 boards. As you stated P67 adds Overclocking ability and lacks Graphics Output.

Z68 combines best of both worlds as well as adds a list of extra's neither of the others have.

Including on some boards ability to support PCI Express 3.0 Spec when used with Ivy Bridge based Intels (not out quite yet).

For the processor I want to go Intel i5 or i7. I was thinking of i5 2500, perhaps the K version, price doesn't differ that much.

If your not planning on Overclocking, get the Non K versions and save a few bucks.

Otherwise the i5 2500 is spot on for bang for buck whether its for OCing or not. The only thing the K model offers is Unlocked Clock Multipliers for more OCing options, thats the ONLY difference between it and the non K model.

Next I saw a lot of fuss about SSDs, the main disadvantage there is the limited amount of cycles before you get data corruption. What I don't get a clear picture of, is how long will it take for the SSD to wear out?

assuming you follow through on the Do's & Don'ts of using an SSD (some of the others can help with that), some basics are moving the windows Swap file off the SSD, don't defrag the drive, use TRIM support in the OS (almost all SSD's support TRIM now), don't run programs that frequently Write data to the drive, such as Distributed Computing Programs, etc, and the drive should last quite a while, unless there's some actual physical defects with it.

Next item is the vid-card. The version numbers and additions are dazzling. You got some that are factory overclocked settings, and those that are lighter versions. I myself was considering a GTX560 Ti, but I was wondering if that was an overclocked version of the 560? It it not entirely clear what makes it perform so much better than the original 560?

Simple Spec comparison is all it takes. The GTX 560 is actually a reduced Spec version of the Ti Model.

Both are a Revision of the GTX 460's GPU, more efficient, and powerful, as well as faster clock speeds.

GTX 560 Ti vs GTX 560 Specs: Video Card Comparison - GPUReview.com

To add to the confusion Nvidia in their Infinite Inept Knowledge (Inept in the fact they can't ever seem to name anything properly with out adding tons of confusion), and an attempt on salvaging their stock of Defective GTX 570 cores for the holiday season, Released a NEW GTX 560 Ti 448 Core model.

It is faster (more powerful) than the Stock Clocked GTX 560 Ti with 384 Cores, but since its based on the GTX 570's chip, with reduced specs, it uses 40W more power, and costs more, $290 at least. Its not THAT much faster than the regular 560 Ti (probably 5 to 10 fps more in most situations, sometimes more with higher resolution/ultra settings in some games), especially compared to Factory OC'd models, but if someone is looking for a Triple SLI setup, its the cheapest options out right now. though for a mere $30-50 more per card, one might as well just get 3 GTX 570's instead.




As for the RAM, if your not going to Overclock, depending on the price of the stuff, I would just stuff some 1333MHz Stuff in the rig instead. Though if you can get 1600Mhz RAM for the same price, might as well toss that in. Plus with all 4 slots occupied, many people run into OCing problems, with all slots in use.

I'd say at least a 60GB SSD would be adequate, maybe 80-90 range, but 60-64GB should be enough for the OS, and some basic apps as you've mentioned, with some room to spare.

I can't remember if Adobe CS5 (or any of the Photoshop products) use a Scratch disk (Folder), but if the software is installed on the SSD, another idea to save on Writes on Drive is move the Scratch Disk to a regular HDD.

At least I remember reading about that for some of the 3D software I use, would imagine it would be the same for Photoshop/related software.

If your thinking of getting a new HDD, Samsung or WD Blue/Black series, is what I would look at. WD Blue series if you can't afford the Black Series, at least 32MB Cache, 7200RPM.

Doesn't matter if its SATA 3.0Gb/s or 6.0Gb/s, standard drives on their own can't even max out SATA 2nd Gen aka 3.0Gb/s bandwidth anyways, unless your running several/many of them in RAID 0.

[Qabouter]

Thanks for the speedy and complete response Shyguy,

I suppose for the motherboard a reasonable Z68 is the best choice then. Maybe not the top-line deluxe version, but a pro or V seems to suit me just as well. I am not gonna plug in a lot of RAID devices, it'll be just single HDD maybe combined with SSD.

As for the memory, I realized that 1600 MHz is OC range, however, over here most webshops have 1600 in stock and 1333 has limited availability and several days estimated delivery times. So since the prices are the same I ended up selecting 1600.

For the HDD the black and blue caviars are very hard to get due to the Thailand situation. I have a SATA II 750 GB black caviar in my previous PC. It was 70 euro at the time, the same one now is nearing 200 euro price.

They do have caviar green ones on offer at the moment, but they are 5400 and 5900 rpm versions. I cannot see what the difference in read/write rates are though with a 7200 rpm one. But I suppose it'll be slower with the advantages of green being they don't heat up that much and are more silent.

[Qabouter]

Hey again,

Did some looking around and based on availability got up to this:


Geachte heer van leeuwen,

Deze E-mail werd naar u verzonden doorqabouter(qabouter@gmail.com) vanaf de ALTERNATE Online-Shop.

Art.-Nr.: Apparaat type Product
HPC15 Processor koeler Arctic Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2
JCXNFM00 Grafische kaart (PCIe) MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II/OC
HR5I09 Processor Intel® Core™ i5-2500
TN6O13 Voeding OCZ ModXStream Pro 600W
TQXM39 Behuizing Cooler Master Sileo 500
CEBI0L DVD-Brander Pioneer DVR-S19LBK
GREM37 Moederbord MSI Z68A-G45 (B3)
AEBS16 Harddisks (SATA) Seagate ST31000528AS
IEIF83JB Geheugen GeIL 16 GB DDR3-1333 Quad-Kit

Sorry for poor formatting, but link goes to the store list for the build.

ALTERNATE - BUILDERS

totals out to around 890 euro.

[stroyal]

Just another thing about the green that slows it down, according to other members, is that it also goes to sleep, taking time to wake up, each time, you use it.

Their main purpose is to save power, so speed isn't something they are good at.

[stroyal]

Double post

[ShyguyXPC]

Just another thing about the green that slows it down, according to other members, is that it also goes to sleep, taking time to wake up, each time, you use it.

Their main purpose is to save power, so speed isn't something they are good at.

I think that can be disabled though in windows.




But I started to make a reply to the first reply to my post from last night but got done and realized most of what I suggested was changed in the 2nd reply with the parts list.

Was going to state about the Mobo & GPU not to limit yourself to Asus brand since its highly over rated.


MSI is good though. Almost all I've used for Video cards and Mobo's for the past half decade or more (with some other brands here and there, including Asus).

Though lately with my current upgrades most of that was switched to EVGA, with the Mobo & GPU's (have owned a few other EVGA and XFX GPU's in past)

The Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 really shouldn't be needed if your not going to OC.

But if your looking for something that looks nice inside it should work.


The Pioneer DVD Burner is a bit pricey, some of the LG, Liteon, Samsung and Sony Ones are just as good, and cheaper.

I currently run a Pioneer and Samsung in my current rig, and my new one I think is running one of the LG models I have (or maybe that one has the Samsung, I just remember I have one PATA drive in my main rig and a SATA in it, and the new system only has a single SATA model)

Overall the rest of the list looks good.

[Qabouter]

Thanks for the help, I just ordered the PC yesterday.

I did go for a cheaper DVD, and I stuck with the cooler. I once had heating problems on a chip that had come with the cooler already attached from Intel. And when I removed it to put on a new cooler turned out the paste was poorly applied and made poor contact between cooler and chip.

Since I am letting the company do the assembly (I = lazy nowadays) they will be forced to remove the factory cooler and put on the new one.

[ShyguyXPC]

factory cooler won't come installed, since its a retail box for the Intel cooler.

The Stock Intel Coolers are perfectly fine these days, have been for a while.

Otherwise, one can just removed the stock thermal paste and apply their own.